to JBfeticaifoti 



^acbers CoIIeae Merles 




JiiiliSl' 






bf 




Book .L vC^A l 

GopiglitB 



CQPHRIGHT DEPOSFT. 



i 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/lancasteriansyst01reig 



THE LANCASTERIAN SYSTEM OF 

INSTRUCTION IN THE SCHOOLS 

OF NEW YORK CITY 



BY 

JOHN FRANKLIN REIGART, Ph.D. 



TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
CONTRIBUTIONS TCP EDUCATION, No. 81 



PUBLISHED BY 

tSmtiftva (Uollpg?, (Columbia :Hmu?rstty 
NEW YORK CITY 

1916 

Monograph 



1 



Copyright, 1916, 

BY 

John FRANkLiN Reigart 



JUL -3 1317 



©CI.A467757 



CONTENTS 

I. Introduction i 

Present System. — Education in New York in 1805. — Free 
School Society. — Infant Schools and Primary Departments. 
— Saturday and Evening Schools. — Religion and the Schools. 
— School Attendance. — Board of Education, 1842. — Con- 
solidation of the Two Systems, 1853. — Financial Support. — 
Philanthropy and Economy. — The Lancasterian System. — 
Extension of Monitorial System. — Completeness of the 
Experiment. 

II. Rise of the Lancasterian System of Instruction 7 

Introduction 

Educational Progress in New York. — This study limited to 

the Lancasterian System. — Vogue of the Lancasterian 

System. — Extension of the System. 
Origin of the System 

Lancaster's First School. — Order. — Monitors. — Discipline. 

— Economy in Instruction. 
Lancaster's School as Described by Sydney Smith 

Reading and Writing. — Arithmetic. — Order. — Rewards. — 

Monitors. 
Reasons for the Introduction of the Lancasterian System in 
New York 

Lack of Schools for the Poor. — Dame Schools. — Ex-Soldiers 

as Teachers. — Teaching not a Profession. — Imposters. — 

Methods Memoriter. — Similar Conditions in Other Cities. — 

Teachers and Methods. — Loss of Time. 

III. Introduction of the Lancasterian System into New York. . 17 

Adopted by the Free School Society. — Method of Introduc- 
tion. — Relation to London Schools. — Lancaster in New 
York City. — Lancaster's Decline. — Personal Appearance. 
— Lancaster's Plans for a National System. — Universal Edu- 
cation. — "The Generous Plan." — Indian Education. — 
Higher Education. — Lancaster as an Inspector. 

IV. Organization of the New York Lancasterian Schools 24 

School Buildings and Equipment 

Buildings of the Free School Society. — Girls and Boys. — 
Infant Schools. — Under Board of Education. — The School- 
room. — Forms. — Semi-circles. — Alphabet Wheel. 



iv Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

Organization of the School 

The Teacher. — Order. — Economy. — Efficiency. — Monitors 
in 1820. — Assistant Teachers. — Monitors in 1850. — Limita- 
tion of Monitorial System. 

Classification of Pupils 

Promotion by Subjects. — Fixed Grading. — Primary Schools. 
— Grammar Schools. — Primary Schools in 1867. — Grammar 
Schools in 1867. 

School Sessions 

Vacations. — School Hours. 

Order of Exercises in Grammar School. 

Order of Exercises in Primary School. — Order of Exercises 
in 1850. 

V. Methods of Teaching ^ 41 

Reading 

Eight Classes for Reading. — Alphabet Class. — Reading and 
Writing Combined. — Sand Table. — Letter Board. — Place 
Taking. — Alphabet Method Intellectual. — One Syllable 
Class. — Slates. — Lack of Variety.— Reading Material. — 
Similar Methods in 1850. — Book Manual. — Imitation of 
Lancasterian Methods. — Weakness of the Monitorial Plan. 
— Results. 

Dictation 

Early Use. — Dictation in 1850. — Formal Discipline. — Dic- 
tation Boards. 

Writing 

Copies. — Poor Results. — Writing in 1850.— Writing Taught 
by Questions. 

Arithmetic 

Grading and Promotion. — Monitorial Methods. — Use of the 
Blackboard. — Results. — Earlier Methods in Arithmetic. 

Science and Object Teaching 

School Museums. — Infant Schools. — Astronomy Intro- 
duced. — Dramatization in Astronomy. — The Holbrook 
Plan of Science Teaching. — Object Lessons in 1850. — Lack 
of Child Study. — Infant Training. — Precocity Cultivated. 
— Exchange of Specimens. — Exchange of Specimens and 
Letters as a Means of Averting the Civil War. 

Manual Training 

No Manual Training in the Schools. — Home Work En- 
couraged. 

School Libraries 

Libraries in All Schools. — Moral Influence.— Children's 
Reading in 1846. 

VI. Religious and Moral Education 65 

Religious but non-sectarian 

Reading of the Scriptures. — Sunday Attendance Required. — 



Contents v 

Catechism Taught. — Religious Instruction. — Religious Read- 
ing. — Persuasive Charge. 

Moral Training 

Means Employed. — Reading Lessons. — A Moral Dialogue. 
— Address to Parents. — Visits to Parents. 

Moral Training through Monitorial Government 
Obedience. — Order. — Industry. — Order Mechanical. — Fail- 
ure as Means of Moral Training. 

Punishments and Rewards 

Lancaster's Punishments. — Lancaster's Hatred of the Rod. 
— Punishment in the New York Public Schools. — Lancas- 
ter's Punishments Discredited. — Rewards. — Discontinuance 
of Gifts. — Plan of Self-Government. — Jury System. — Class 
of Merit. 

VII. School Inspection and Training of Teachers 86 

Examinations and Exhibitions 

Weekly Examinations. — Annual Examinations. 

Training of Teachers 

Monitors become Teachers. — Training in Six Weeks. — 
Morning School for Monitors. — Saturday and Evening 
Normal Schools. 

VIII. Summary and Conclusion 94 

Adequate Trial of the Monitorial System. — Reasons for the 
Choice of the System. — Blind Adherence to the System. — 
Decline of the Public School Society. — Educational Monop- 
oly. — Distrust of the Society. — Decline of the Monitorial 
System. — Monitors Supplanted by Teachers. — Failure of 
Benevolent Despotism in Education. 

Beneficial Results of the System 

Education of the Community to the Support of the Schools. 
— Training of Teachers. — Improved Organization. — Milder 
Forms of Punishment. 

Evil Effects of the System 

Slavery to System. — School Organization. — Methods of 
Instruction. — Discipline. 

IX. Bibliography 102 



INTRODUCTION 

The present school system of the city of New York is the result of 

growth and unification extending over a period of nearly a century, 

from the organization of the Free School Society in 

Present 
1805 to the reorganization of the schools of the greater System 

city in 1902. During nearly half of that period public 
elementary education was a dminis tered by a corporation not respon- 
sible to the people. From the establishment of the Board of Education 
in 1842 to its absorption of the Public School Society in 1853, two 
distinct systems existed. The formation of the greater city of New 
York in 1898 involved great extension and new readjustment. To 
the school system of the former city of New York, now the Borough 
of Manhattan and the Borough of the Bronx, there were added two 
city school systems, those of Brooklyn and Long Island City, and 
thirty-five school districts in the Borough of Queens and twenty-nine 
in the Borough of Richmond. Complete unification of these diverse 
elements was not accomplished until the charter of 1901 went into 
effect. 

In 1805, for a population of more than 75,000, the only facilities 
for elementary education were provided by private, church, and 

charity schools, with one hundred and forty-one 

, , i i j j j • Education in 

teachers, of whom one hundred and six were men jj ew Y or k i8os 

and thirty-five were women. A school for colored 

children, the African Free School, had been opened in 1787 by 

the Manumission Society; and a school for girls, in 1801, by the 

Association of Women Friends for the Relief of the Poor, generally 

known as the Female Association. The schools of these associations 

were later taken over by the Public School Society; those of the 

Manumission Society in 1834, and of the Female Association in 1845. 

The purpose of the Free School Society, of which De Witt Clinton 

was the first president and the largest contributor, was, as stated in 

their first address to the public, "to extend the means 

of education to such poor children as do not belong to, Society 

or are not provided for, by any religious society." 

The first school was opened in 1806. In 1826, owing to the desire 

1 



2 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

to admit pay pupils, the name of the association was changed to the 
Public School Society. At this time the schools of the Society num- 
bered twenty-one, with 6007 pupils, while the number of children 
between the ages of five and fifteen, who attended no school what- 
ever, was estimated at 20,000. Bourne, in his "History of the 
Public School Society," p. 121, presents the condition of the schools 
of the city in 1826 in the following table: 



Schools 


Principal 
Teachers 


Assist- 
ants 


Pupils 


430 Private 
3 Incorporated 
19 Charity 
11 Public 


432 

6 

25 

21 


259 
23 

5 
- 24 


15,320 
1,081 
2,544 
6,007 


463 Total 


484 


311 


24,952 



The Lancasterian system of instruction was introduced in the first 
public school and was maintained throughout the existence of the 

Public School Society. But New York 
Infant Schools and . „ , . ■, ■, .* -n .l 1 

Primary Departments was not unaffected by the Pestalozzian 

movement, particularly by the form under 
which it became most popular in England as Infant Schools. In 
1828 permission was granted to the Infant School Society, organized 
in the previous year, to organize schools in the basements of certain 
public school buildings. These schools were open to children from 
two to six years of age, and retained until dark the children of parents 
who were occupied during the day. After the model of these Infant 
Schools, the Public School Society in 1830 formed Primary Depart- 
ments and, in 1832, Primary Schools. There were now three classes 
of schools: (1) Public Schools, having the more advanced boys and 
girls in separate departments; (2) Primary Departments, developed 
from the Infant Schools; and (3) Primary Schools, admitting boys 
from four to six years of age, and girls of four years and over. 

A plan for evening schools for apprentices and others was put in 
operation in 1833, but was relinquished after three or four years 

owing to "smallness of numbers and the 
Ev^nm^Schools Sreat difficulties in regard to discipline." 

The real causes of failure were no doubt 
that teachers were forced to serve without pay and that there was no 
organization of authority. (Evening schools were afterwards suc- 
cessfully inaugurated by the Board of Education in 1847.) Satur- 
day and evening schools for the instruction of monitors, established 



Introduction 3 

in 1834 and 1835, were more successful, as attendance was compul- 
sory. These schools were known as "Normal Schools" though no 
professional instruction was given. 

In its inception the Free School Society was non-sectarian, but 
not unmindful of the importance of religious training. The Bible 
was read daily in the schools. Tuesday afternoons were set apart 
for instruction in the catechisms of the various 
denominations. On Sundays the children as- die Schools 

sembled at the schools and then proceeded, under 
the care of monitors, to the churches to which they belonged. As 
the society successfully opposed attempts of various denominations 
to share in the school money, it was open to attack in case any sec- 
tarian bias was shown in its schools. Such bias in favor of Protes- 
tantism was claimed by the Catholics on the basis of objectionable 
passages in text-books and library books. Other denominations also 
opposed the Society's maintenance of a monopoly of public educa- 
tion in the city. 

Another reason for lack of confidence in the existing system of 
schools was the failure to provide adequate facilities for a rapidly 
growing population and to secure school attend- 
ance. Several attempts had been made to reach Attendance 
the "idle and vicious." In 1828, Mr. Samuel W. 
Seton was employed as "visitor" to hunt up vagrant children and 
their parents, and to canvass among those who did not go to school. 
Persuasion not being effective, the Common Council in 1832 ordered 
that the Commissioner of the Alms House deny "public favor" to all 
parents who did not send to school children between the ages of five 
and twelve. In his annual message for 1842 Governor Seward stated 
that 20,000 children of school age received no instruction in the city 
of New York, while the number in the remainder of the state did 
not exceed 9000. 

With the establishment of the first Board of Education in 1842, 
the Public School Society no longer possessed a monopoly in public 
education. The new schools were called Ward 
Schools, each ward being practically a school Education 1842 
district. The monitorial system was not adopted, 
a larger proportion of class rooms and teachers was provided and 
higher salaries were paid. In less than ten years the attendance of 
the Ward Schools surpassed the attendance of the schools of the 
society, whose growth was checked by a law forbidding it to establish 



4 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

any new school without the consent of the Board of Education, and 
by the refusal of the Board to furnish all the money needed to make 
up deficits. 

The anomalous situation of two systems of public schools existing 
side by side came to an end in 1853, when the Public School Society 

ceased to exist, and its schools, with an attend- 
Consolidation of the r i , on nr\r\ j i. ^ ±. j 

Two Systems i8s^ ance a b° ut 20,000 and property estimated at 
about half a million, were turned over to the 
Board of Education. During the forty-eight years of its history the 
Society had, as it claimed, educated 600,000 pupils and trained 1200 
teachers. 

At first the public schools were supported by voluntary subscrip- 
tion, with no fees from pupils, and no financial aid from the city or 
state. The contributions for the first year 
SuDoort amounted to $6501. The pay system was intro- 

duced in 1826, but proved unsuccessful and, after 
a trial of six years, was relinquished. Nor was the subscription plan 
by any means adequate to maintain the public schools. As early as 
1807 a grant of $500 was made by the city; and by the state $4000 was 
appropriated for building, and $1000 annually to be paid out of the 
liquor tax. From 1815 the Society received its share of the State 
Common School Fund, amounting at that time to $3700, and from 
1819 one half of the tax on lottery licenses, amounting to $1000. 
The request for a tax of one-half mill was met by the Legislature in 
1829 by the grant of a tax of one-eighth mill, which in 1831 was 
raised to one-half mill. Governor Seward, in his annual message 
for 1842, stated that the trustees of the Society were the dispensers 
of an average annual sum of $35,000 from the Common School Fund 
and $95,000 from a tax on real and personal estates of the city. Ex- 
penditures rapidly increased under the Board of Education. After 
1871 school buildings were paid for by the issue of city bonds. For 
the maintenance of schools, the Legislature fixed, in 1901, a four mill 
tax, which, however, two years later, was reduced to three mills. 
This rate proved to be. insufficient, unless supplemented by appro- 
priations by the Board of Estimate, to meet the cost of higher salaries 
and the great expansion of school activities, a sum amounting to 
about $40,000,000 a year, nearly one-fourth of the city budget. 

That the education of the poor was a proper object of private 
philanthropy, rather than a matter of direct public responsibility, 



Introduction 5 

was quite in accord with the educational and polit- 
ical ideas prevalent at the beginning of the nine- anc j 1 Economy 
teenth century. Direct control of public schools 
and greatly increased expenditures were manifestations of the broader 
view of municipal functions which developed about the middle of the 
century. In 1842 the Croton water supply was provided, in 1851 
Central Park was purchased; in 1845 the Police Department was 
established, in 1865 the paid Fire Department, and in 1866 the 
Board of Health. The per capita expenditures doubled each de- 
cade from 1850 to 1870. 

The trustees of the Public School Society never had the funds or 
the public opinion to support any expensive undertaking. They 
lacked the money to establish a much desired high school or to sup- 
port evening schools. Their finest school house, called a "model 
building," cost $17,000 for ground, building, and furnishing. The 
salaries of teachers were considerably less than those of the Ward 
Schools. The cost of tuition and supplies per pupil was, in 1823, 
as low as $1.80. 

It was, in great measure, due to the "limited state of funds" that 

the society introduced in their first school, in 1806, the monitorial 

system, at that time in vogue in England and on 

,, ,. , , r i ji j , ,• j i The Lancasterian 

the continent through the adaptation and popular- Svstem 

ization of mutual instruction by Bell and Lan- 
caster. As Bell's system was pushed by the Church of England 
and associated with its religious propaganda, while Lancaster's was 
non-sectarian and supported by non-conformists, particularly by 
the Friends, the latter form was naturally the one to enlist the inter- 
est of the trustees of the Free School Society, among whom Friends 
were the dominant influence. For the details of the plan the Society 
was indebted to its first secretary, Benjamin Perkins, who visited 
Lancaster in London and published, in 1807, the first American 
edition of the "Improvements in Education." Through the agency 
of the British and Foreign School Society a trained teacher was 
brought over from England in 1818. Lancaster himself arrived 
later in the year. Though necessarily modified by the adoption of 
the Infant School system, and by the introduction of higher branches 
of study, the monitorial system retained the official sanction of the 
society. To the city of New York belongs the distinction of the 
introduction of the system in America and its most consistent sup- 
port. 



6 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

The influence of the New York Public Schools and of the New 
York Monitorial High School, founded by John Griscom (1825— 
1831), was a marked factor in the foundation of 
Monitorial°System monitorial schools throughout the country. With 
the zealous and powerful advocacy of Governor 
Clinton, the schools of New York, as later the schools of Quincy 
under Col. Parker and those of Gary under Superintendent Wirt, 
evoked widespread discussion, adulation, criticism, and imitation. 

Seldom has any educational experiment had a trial so complete 
and adequate, and few have resulted in so signal a failure. A self- 
perpetuating body of most enlightened and dis- 
Completeness of ,. . , , ... , ,,. , , ,. 

the Experiment tinguished citizens, holding a monopoly in public 

education in the metropolis, adopted a system 
which seemed to promise "a new era in education," maintained this 
system as nearly as possible "in its original purity," and retained 
towards it an unshaken confidence even after its mechanical nature 
and its educational inadequacy had become almost universally recog- 
nized. 



II 

RISE OF THE LANCASTERIAN SYSTEM OF INSTRUCTION 

While the unparalleled growth of the New York School system 
under the Free School Society to 1826, the Public School Society to 
1853, and the Board of Education of the greater 

citv to 1905 has been duly recorded, *» the his- Educational Progress 

' in j\ ew i ork 

torian of a school system, engaged in tracing 

the development of organization and adrninistration, finds but small 
space for the description of methods of instruction and discipline. 
Yet the changes that have taken place in teaching are as striking and 
significant to the student of education as the remarkable increase in 
numbers and material equipment. Simultaneous and draft instruction 
has been replaced by the lessons of the class room, the child monitor by 
the trained teacher, parrot-like dictation and interrogation by intelli- 
gent teaching, the constraint of the gallery by the freedom of the 
kindergarten, a program of monotony and dullness by the modern 
enriched curriculum. 

It is the purpose of this investigation to trace the part played by 
that system of instruction which was adopted at the foundation of 

the New York Free Schools, and which, with 

!•/-,• • r -L ij: This Studv Limited to 

modifications, was in use tor hall a centurv — T . J . c . 

' . - Lancastenan System 

the system of monitorial instruction known 

as the Lancasterian. This plan of instruction, now almost forgotten, 

was, with its rival, but similar system, that of Dr. Andrew Bell, the 

most popular means of elementary education during the first hah of 

the nineteenth century. It formed the basis 

for the most extravagant hopes for the im- T Wueof the 

° r Lancastenan System 

provement of mankind. The Westminster 

Review of January, 1824, estimated the improvement made in the 

art of teaching as ''of more importance to the advancement of knowl- 



1 Bourne, Wm. Oland, Public School Society of New York, New York, 1870. 
! Boese, Thomas, Public Education in the City of New York, New York, 
1869. 

3 Palmer, A. Emerson, The New York Public School, New York, 1905. 

7 



8 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

edge than any discovery that has been made since the invention of 
the alphabet itself." Governor De Witt Clinton, in his message to 
the New York Legislature in 1818, drew a parallel between the estab- 
lishment of the Lancasterian system and the introduction of labor- 
saving machinery. To the trustees of the Lancaster School of 
Georgetown, D. C., the system appeared as a sign from God, "that 
he had not forgotten to be gracious." 1 Lancaster had the good for- 
tune to secure the patronage or arouse the interest of the powerful 
and learned of his time. Sydney Smith called George Ill's support 
of Lancaster the brightest passage in the history of his long reign. 2 
James Mill, Jeremy Bentham, the Duke of Bedford, Sydney Smith, 
De Witt Clinton, and Thomas Jefferson were advocates of the system. 
The extension of the system can be traced in the reports of the Brit- 
ish and Foreign School Society. It became the basis for elementary 
education in England; it was adopted as the national system of Ire- 
land; was used in Scotland, especially in Glasgow and Edinburgh, 

and in the British Colonies, India, West Indies, Can- 
th Svstem a< ^ a anc ^ Africa. It was more or less employed in all 

the countries of Europe except Turkey. It was widely 
used in the United States and South America. Lancaster scarcely 
exceeds the facts in his claim: "The system spread from Thames to 
Ganges; it has encircled the equator; it has encompassed the poles." 3 
In New York City, from 1806 to 1853,600,000 children were instructed 
in Lancasterian schools. 4 

America seemed to be the most favorable field for Lancaster's 
system. In the words of DeWitt Clinton, "His tree of knowledge 
is indeed transplanted to a more fertile soil and a more congenial 
clime. It has flourished with uncommon vigor and beauty; its 
luxuriant and wide-spreading branches afford shelter to all who re- 
quire it; its ambrosial fragrance fills the land, and its head reaches 
the heavens!" 5 

Origin of the System 

Lancaster, at the age of twenty, in the year 1798 opened in his 
father's house in Southwark, London, a school for poor children. 



1 Report of Georgetown, D. C, Lancaster School, 1812. 

2 Edinburgh Review, XVII, 69. 

3 Lancaster, Epitome, p. 9. 

4 Report of Public School Society, 1853. 

6 Clinton, DeWitt, address to the Free School Society, New York, 1809. 



Rise of the Lancasterian System of Instruction 9 

Lacking education, except the most rudimentary, he 
wsa equipped with a zeal which led him at the early s , , 

age of eight to devote himself to the good of humanity 
and at fourteen to start for Jamaica to teach the blacks. "He had 
many of the qualifications of a great teacher — zeal, self-confidence, 
ingenuity in devising methods, intuitive insight into the natrue of 
children, an ardent love for them, and rare power of managing them. 
He threw himself into the work of his new school with characteristic 
enthusiasm. For the good or delight of his pupils no labour was too 
severe and no sacrifice too onerous. For them he spent body, mind, 
and estate (and as much of the estate of other people as they could 
be induced to part with) ; on holidays he led large parties of them for 
excursions into the suburbs; on Sundays, from forty to sixty of them, 
bringing their own bread and butter, used to take tea with him; 
and during the severe winter of 1799-1800 he fed and clothed some 
sixty or eighty of them." 

" . . . To a school where there was much to receive and little to 
pay, and where the master was the embodiment of kindness and 
generosity, the children came in crowds, and one room after another 
grew too small." 1 Though aided by the subscriptions of his neigh- 
bors and fellow Quakers, Lancaster was nearly overwhelmed by his 
success in attracting pupils. Necessity lead him to utilize the boys 
who knew a little in teaching the boys who knew less. "Lancaster 
was a born organizer of children. He left nothing to chance or 
caprice. To him we owe the pregnant mottoes: 'A place for every- 
thing and everything in its place,' and 'Let every child at every 
moment have something to do and a motive for doing 
it.' Each act of school-life was regulated by a well- 
considered series of signals and commands, and there were many 
labor-saving devices." 2 

The government of the school was almost automatic. "Little 
was left for the master to do except to organize, to reward, to punish, 
and to inspire. The very essence of the system was the Monitors 
monitor. When a child was admitted, a monitor as- 
signed him his class; while he remained, a monitor taught him (with 
nine other pupils); when he was absent, one monitor ascertained the 
fact, and another found out the reason; a monitor examined him peri- 



1 Salmon, Joseph Lancaster, p. 5. 
1 Ibid., p. 9. 



10 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

odically, and when he made progress, a monitor promoted him; a 
monitor ruled the writing paper; a monitor made or mended the pens; 
a monitor had charge of the slates and books; and a monitor general 
looked after all the other monitors. Every monitor wore a leather 
ticket, gilt, and lettered 'Monitor of the First Class/ 'Reading Moni- 
tor of the Second Class,' etc." 1 The discipline of the school was based 
upon emulation and shame. Place-taking and prizes were utilized 
to an extravagant degree. The rod, of which Lancaster had a perfect 
Discipline horror, was replaced by what in many cases seem to 

be even more questionable devices; boys were labeled 
with badges of disgrace, shackled, suspended in a sack or basket, 
tied to desks or posts; while the incorrigible were sometimes tied up 
in a blanket, and left to sleep at night on the floor in the school-house. 
"The same desire to economise, which was the first motive for the 
use of monitors, was also the first motive for changes in methods of 

instruction. It was to avoid the cost of reading-books 
I ^ruction* ^at Lancaster introduced reading-sheets; it was to 

avoid the cost of paper, pens, and ink that he intro- 
duced slates; it was to avoid the cost of the arithmetic text-books 
and the 'cyphering' books into which it was the custom to copy all 
worked 'sums' that he introduced his wonderful 'plan whereby any 
child who can read may teach arithmetic with the utmost certainty.'" 2 

Lancaster's School Described by Sidney Smith 
The Edinburgh Review, an ardent and influential advocate of 
Lancaster's methods, contains the following description of the new 
system, "The first or lower class of children are taught to write the 
printed alphabet, and to name the letters when they see them. The 
same with the figures used in arithmetic. One day the boy traces 
the form of the letter, or figure; the next he tells the name, when he 
sees the letter. These two methods assist each other. When he is 
required to write H, for example, the shape of the letter which he saw 
yesterday assists his manual execution — when he is required to say 
how that letter is named, the shape of the letter reminds him of his 
manual execution; and the manual execution has associated itself 
with the name. In the same manner he learns syllables 
Reading and an( j WO rds ; writing them one day — reading them the next. 
The same process for writing the common epistolary 
character, and for reading it. 

1 Salmon, Joseph Lancaster, p. 7. 

2 Ibid., p. 12. 



Rise of the Lancasterian System of Instruction 11 

" (A) This progress made, the class go up to the master to read — a 
class consisting perhaps of 30. While one boy is reading, the word, 
e. g. Ab-so-lu-ti-on, is given out with a loud voice by the monitor, 
and written down by all the other 29 boys, who are provided with 
slates for the purpose; which writing is looked over by monitors, and 
then another word called, and so on; whoever writes a word, spells it 
of course at the same time, and spells it with much more attention 
than in the common way. So that there is always one boy reading, 
and twenty-nine writing and spelling at the same time; whereas, in 
the ancient method, the other twenty-nine did nothing. 

" (B) The first and second classes write in sand; the middle classes 
on slates; only a few of the upper boys on paper with ink. This is a 
great saving point of expense, — in books the saving is still greater. 
Twenty or thirty boys stand around a card suspended on a nail, 
making a semicircle. On this card are printed the letters in very 
large characters; — these letters the boys are to name, at the request 
of the monitor. When one spelling class have said their lessons in 
this manner, they are despatched off to some other occupation, and 
another spelling class succeeds. In this way one book or card may 
serve for two hundred boys, who would, according to the common 
method, have had a book each. In the same manner, syllables and 
reading lessons are printed on cards and used with the same bene- 
ficial economy. 

"(C) In arithmetic, the monitor dictates a sum, ex. gr. in addi- 
tion, which all the boys write down on their slates, for example, 

7 2 4 

o^o Arithmetic 

9 4 6 

He then tells them, aloud, how to add the sum. First column — 
6 and 8 are 14, and 4 are 18; set down 8 and carry 1 to the next 
column; and so on. In this manner, the class acquire facility of 
writing figures, and placing them; and, by practising what the mon- 
itor dictates, insensibly acquire facility in adding. Again they are 
placed around arithmetical cards, in the same manner as in para- 
graph (B), and required to add up the columns. This method evinces 
what progress they have made from the preceding method of dic- 
tating; and the two methods are always used alternately. 

"It is obvious that a school like this of Mr. Lancaster's, consist- 
ing of from 700 to 1000 boys, would soon fall into decay, without 



12 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

very close attention to order and method. In this part of his system, 
q , Mr. Lancaster has been as eminently successful as in any 

other; contriving to make the method and arrangement, 
so necessary to his institution, a source of amusement to the children. 
In coming into school, in going out, and in moving in their classes from 
one part of the school to another, the children move in a kind of meas- 
ured pace, and in known places, according to their number, of which 
every boy has one. Upon the first institution of the school, there was 
a great loss and confusion of hats. After every boy has taken his 
place there, they all stand up expecting the word of command, ' Sling 
your hats!' upon which they immediately suspend their hats round 
their necks by a string provided for that purpose. When the young 
children write in sand, they all look attentively to their monitor, wait- 
ing for the word, and instantly fall to work, with military precision, 
upon receiving it. All these little inventions keep children in a con- 
stant state of activity, prevent the listlessness so observable in all 
other institutions for education, and evince (trifling as they appear to 
be) a very original and observing mind in him who invented them. 

"The boys assembled round their reading or arithmetical cards 
take places as in common schools. The boy who is at the head of 
Rewards t ^ ie c ^ ass wears a ticket, with some suitable inscription, 
and has a prize of a little picture. The ticket-bearer 
yields his badge of honor to whoever can excel him; and the desire 
of obtaining and fear of losing the mark of distinction, create, as 
may easily be conceived, no common degree of enterprize and exer- 
tion. Boys have a prize when they are moved from one class to 
another, as the monitor has also from whose class they are removed. 
Mr. Lancaster has established a sort of paper currency of tickets. 
These tickets are given for merit — two tickets are worth a paper 
kite; three worth a ball; four worth a wooden horse, etc. 

"It is no unusual thing with me to deliver one or two hundred 
prizes at the same time. And at such times the countenances of 
the whole school exhibit a most pleasing scene of delight; as the boys 
who obtain prizes commonly walk around the school in procession, 
holding the prizes in their hands, with a herald proclaiming before 
them, 'These good boys have obtained prizes for going into another 
class.' The honor of this has an effect as powerful, if not more so, 
than the prizes themselves. 

"A large collection of toys, bats, balls, pictures, kites, is suspended 
above the master's head beaming glory and pleasure upon the school 



Rise of the Lancasterian System of Instruction 13 

beneath. Mr. Lancaster has also, as another incentive, an order 
of merit. No boys are admitted to this order but those who dis- 
tinguish themselves by attention to their studies, and by their en- 
deavours to check vice. The distinguishing badge is a silver medal 
and plated chain hanging from the neck. The superior class has a 
fixed place in the school; any class that can excel it may eject them 
from this place and occupy it themselves. Every member, both of 
the attacking and defending classes, feels of course the most lively 
interest in the issue of the contest. 

"Mr. Lancaster punishes by shame rather than pain; varying the 
means of exciting shame, because, as he justly observes, any mode 
of punishment long continued loses its effect. 

"The boys in the school appointed to teach others are called mon- 
itors; they are in the proportion of about one monitor to ten boys. 
So that, for the whole school of one thousand boys, ™ . 

there is only one master; the rest of the teaching is 
all done by the boys themselves. Besides the teaching monitors, 
there are general monitors, such as, inspectors of slates, inspectors 
of absentees, etc." 1 

Reasons for the Introduction of the Lancasterian System 
in New York 

That without royal patronage or the stimulus of religious contro- 
versy, America should rival England in the adoption and extension 
of so mechanical a system of instruction as the one just described 
would seem incomprehensible at this date were it not for the evidence 
of the extremely inferior and inadequate school facilities in our cities 
before the introduction of the Lancasterian system. To supply 
instruction to the thousands of neglected children there was at hand 
a ready-made plan, remarkably cheap in operation, and, with all its 
faults, apparently superior in method and discipline to the schools 
of the day. "Previous to the establishment of the Free School 
Society in 1806, there were but five charity schools in the City of 
New York, and these were small and for the ex- 
clusive benefit of the children of members of the , th C p 
several religious sects supporting them. The chil- 
dren of a large portion of the poor population were constantly left 
a prey to all the evils of ignorance and idleness, and were growing 



Sydney Smith, Edinburgh Review, 1807, Vol. XI, pp. 62-65. 



14 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

up in habits calculated to fit them for the tenantry of pauper and 
prison establishments." 1 

For children of the better classes the educational opportunities 
were but little superior. Washington Irving, "in his fourth year 

was sent to a school in Ann Street between William 
S In* I an< ^ Gold, kept by Miss Ann Kilmaster. Here he 

continued upwards of two years, making very little 
progress beyond the alphabet. From Miss Kilmaster's he was trans- 
ferred, toward the close of 1789, to a school for both sexes kept by 

Benjamin Romaine, at 198 Fulton Street. Romaine 
as Teachers ^ad ^ een a S0 ^ (Uer m the revolution, and was a thor- 

ough disciplinarian." 2 The common type of illiter- 
ate and unprincipled teachers in New York during the first quarter 
of the century is pictured in the pages of the Academician. "We 

need not expect a salutary change in our instructors 
Profession" ^ anc * s y stem °f education as long as the business is 

run as an auxiliary to the acquirement of a particular 
profession." . . . "Not one in a thousand who is a preceptor 
from necessity, and has a particular post of honor in view bestows 
the attention which is requisite in the art of teaching, as he is too 
much occupied in preparing himself for his intended business." 3 A 
lack of professional standards is indicated by the practice of teachers 
going around "to beg scholars" "Sir, if you will send your children to 
me I will teach them better than any other person, and for less, I will 
take them for two dollars, or for nothing rather than they should go 

to Mr. ." 4 "The effects of low and illiterate preceptors are 

most severely felt in this city. The minds of their pupils, left unex- 
Im sters ercised, are open to all the vices prevalent among 

the most worthless part of the community. The 
children have nothing to do but run in the streets, upon the dismis- 
sion of schools. In the morning they return to lounge out their time 
in indolence and ignorance. Hence is the contempt in which some 
schools are held. Children make no improvement. Parents are so 
thoughtless as to commit their children to the care of illiterate and 
daring imposters." 5 



1 Report, New York Free School Society, 1823. 

2 Pierre M. Irving, Life and Letters of Washington Irving, 1871, Chap. 
II, p. 11. 

3 Academician, 1818, pp. 37-38. 

4 Ibid., 1818, p. 208. 
6 Ibid., p. 226. 



Rise of the Lancasterian System of Instruction 15 

The methods of teaching may be inferred from the character of the 
teacher. "The vague and ill devised methods of teaching in general 
are fraught with the most serious evils. . . . 
Our youths are made to languish over books of Memoriter 

words accompanied only by the midnight lamp, 
without explanation or oral instruction, and compelled to recite these 
words, not understood, verbatim, on entering school the next morn- 
ing. This, although a popular method, is one of the most inconsist- 
ent, absurd requisitions that was ever forced on human beings." 1 

That New York was not unique among our great cities for its inad- 
equate and inferior educational opportunities during the first quarter 

of the nineteenth century and that the conditions 

, r • i i • i • -j j i. Conditions 

here were fairly typical, is evidenced by compar- j n other Cit' 

ison with Boston schools of the same period. 

Primary schools were not established until 1818. To that time the 

alphabet and reading were taught in dame schools or at home. No 

pupils were admitted to the Grammar School unless 

they could read. Writing was taught in separate ' B 

schools. In 1800 the free schools taught 900 pupils 

and private schools 500; in 1817, the public schools, 2365, and the 

private, 4132. It was estimated that 529 children of school age were 

not in school. 2 

Many of the teachers were old soldiers. Henry K. Oliver says that 

his first school in Boston, in 1805, was kept by 

man, wife, and widowed daughter; poor people, e ^g^ds 

who were patronized to save them from deeper 

want. "By him was I taught my a, b, c, d, e, f, g, my a, b, abs and 

my e, b, ebs, after the old, old, way, in an old book in his old hand, 

and pointing with an old pin to the old letters on the old page, and 

making each of us chicks repeat their several names till we could tell 

them at sight, though we did not know what it was all for." 3 The 

A, B, C's were taught forward and back. Dilworth's Speller was the 

principal text, the Psalter, the only reading book. 4 "There were no 

schools systematically graded, there were no blackboards, no globes, 

or other ordinary school apparatus in schools I attended. I never 

saw a full-sized map or illustration pictures. There was no Warren 

1 Academician, Vol. I, p. 244. 

2 American Journal of Education, Vol. 19, p. 470. 

3 Oliver, H. K., American Institute of Instruction, Lectures, 1871. 

4 American Journal of Education, Vol. 13, pp. 737-752. 



16 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

Colburn arithmetic. The method of teaching the science of number 
was utterly unscientific. No recitation rooms were attached to gen- 
eral school rooms. In this room we sat, studied, idled, recited, were 
flogged as the case may be." 1 

Boston Primary Schools, containing fifty to sixty children, were 
taught on an individual basis, with consequent loss of time. "Let 
an observer enter any of these not taught on the moni- 
T - torial plan, and he will see five or ten children around the 

teacher receiving her immediate attention, and all the 
rest more or less orderly according to the dispositions of the children, 
and the efficiency of the instructor, but mostly idle and languid. 
A calculation of the time assigned to the' actual instruction of each 
scholar . ' . . will give six minutes as the total average." 2 
Conditions in the Latin School were not much better. "Nobody can 
be ignorant of the vast amount of time squandered at school, during 
the time scholars are not saying, and perhaps not even pretending 
to learn, their lessons. The best regulated schools we have ever 
seen, in other countries or in this, appropriate but a very trivial por- 
tion of time to the actual business of tuition. . . . The Boston 
Latin School, one of the best taught in the country, is an undisputed 
example of unusual success in the common methods of teaching. 
But in lower forms, boys who have been to a lesson or two in Latin 
are then dismissed to Writing School for work which could have been 
done in unoccupied time in Latin School." 3 



Oliver, H. K., op. cit. 

2 American Journal of Education, 1828, Vol. Ill, p. 289. 

3 Ibid., p. 288. Review of Boston School Committee Report on Monitorial 
Instruction. 



Ill 

INTRODUCTION OF THE LANCASTERIAN SYSTEM INTO 

NEW YORK 

It was but natural that the public spirited men who formed the 
New York Free School Society in 1805 should be influenced by the 
much heralded work of their fellow Quaker in London. 
The Lancasterian system was put into operation in Adopted by 

their first school, opened 1806, and in every succeeding So ■ ^ 

school. It remained the official system of the schools 
of the Society until 1853 when the Board of Education assumed con- 
trol of all the public schools. 

As the New York Free School was the first to employ the Lancas- 
terian system in America, it has been assumed that the first teacher 
employed by the society, William Smith, must have 
learned the system in England. 1 But there is no instruction 

record to this effect. The method of in trod action was 
no doubt as stated by Lancaster himself in the Baltimore edition of 
his "Lancasterian System of Education." 2 "In 1802, a Friend by the 
name of Perkins, from the city of New York, visited Joseph Lancaster 
in London, and published an edition of his first book upon his return to 
America. This induced a private teacher to attempt the plan, and B. 
Perkins continued to give his advice grounded on what he had wit- 
nessed in practice. Such a degree of success attended this early 
effort that, in process of time, about three thousand children have 
been educated in schools in that city. Without undervaluing the 
aid given to the cause by private individuals, the governor, DeWitt 
Clinton, has fully established his reputation, as the first public man 
who officially rendered services to the introduction of a system of 
which he is a steady friend and supporter." The Benjamin D. Per- 
kins here referred to was the first secretary of the Free School Society, 



1 Palmer, A. Emerson, New York Public Schools, p. g. 

2 Lancaster, Joseph, The Lancasterian System of Education with improve- 
ments by its founder, Lancaster Institute, Baltimore, Md., Wm. Ogden Niles, 
printer, 1821, p. xiv. 

17 



18 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

was recognized as their main authority on Lancaster's methods, and 
was the publisher of the New York edition of Lancaster's "improve- 
ments in Education." x The first report of the Free School Society 
tends to confirm Lancaster's statement: "The limited state of funds 
rendering the utmost economy necessary, the celebrated system of 
Lancaster recommended itself to their notice as particularly adapted 
to the occasion. Every inquiry respecting it tended to increase an 
inclination to make an experiment of it. Happily a teacher who had 
already adopted it with success and who in other respects appeared 
well qualified for the undertaking was found." 2 

The trustees took every means to maintain the purity of their 
chosen system. In 1818, they imported" a teacher, Charles Picton, 

from the parent school in London; in 1820, they 
London Schools issued a new manual based on that of the British 

and Foreign School Society for 1816; and in 1818, 
they welcomed the author of the system, Joseph Lancaster. "His ar- 
rival, about the year 1820, created a sensation among the friends of 
useful knowledge. Lancaster, by many years' service abroad and by 
the discussion which arose from his system of instruction, had rendered 
his name quite familiar at the time of his appearance in New York. 
It was conceded that he had effected a substantial advance in the 
means of enlightening the masses, and at a pecuniary expense well 
worth the action of the economical teacher. The patrons of the com- 
mon schools, such men as Clinton, Griscom, Eddy and Wood, felt the 
duty obligatory to pay deference to the philosophical stranger, and 
give countenance to his suggestions. But he had little to offer that 
was new, the Lancasterian plan had been already widely tested; it had 
its friends and opponents." 3 . . . "The very Quakerism of Lan- 
caster had tended vastly to promote the diffusion of his system, and 

the encouragement of his plans, and the support 
ancas er in ew ^ rece j ve( j ought to have secured at least his 

temporal independence. But with increased 
fiscal means his expenditures had increased and the philanthropic 
man, deserting the rigid and frugal habits of his sect, involved himself 
in many obligations, and now sought the chances of redemption by 



1 Collins and Perkins, 1807. 

2 Sketch of the New York Free School in Lancaster's Improvements in 
Education, New York, 1807, p. xxi. 

3 Francis, John W., Old New York, 1866, pp. 185-187. 



Introduction of the Lancasterian System Into New York 19 

his transatlantic residence. There was, however, little to do by Lan- 
caster or for him. Within a short time he became an object of elee- 
mosynary relief ; yet his Quaker disciples, with characteristic benevo- 
lence, were not behindhand in contributions. While, however, he 
could enumerate DeWitt Clinton within his charity 

T ,7\ wc7\ s1"p.r* s 

circle of friends, he felt protected. The latter years Decline 

of his life gave unmistakable evidence of hard times with 
him. I have rarely seen an object of deeper commiseration among 
individuals who, according to the world's decision, had made a mark. 
He who had once figured in England in his chariot and six, felt the 
want of means to purchase a crutch. An accident terminated his 
life in New York in 1839. I have indicated that Clinton was especi- 
ally kind toward Lancaster. It was that sort of kindness that arose 
from the consideration of the good he had done, and could in no wise 
originate from a contemplation of the man himself. 
He was now a mass of obesity, unwieldy, and of feeble Appearance 
articulation, such as we occasionally see in individuals 
of objectionable habits, loaded with adipose deposits, 'an aggravated 
agglomeration of superabundant redundancies.'" 1 

Lancaster himself considered his presence in the United States as 
an affair of national significance. After official receptions in New 
York, Albany, and Philadelphia, he visited Congress on the 26th of 
of January, 1819, when the House of Representatives Plans for a 
passed a resolution: "That Joseph Lancaster, the National 

friend of learning and of man be admitted to a seat with- System 

in the Hall." 2 In a series of letters addressed to President Monroe, 
Henry Clay, Speaker of the House, and Representative Bassett, 
Lancaster develops his ideas for advancing the "general prosperity 
of this country" by means of the application of his system to higher 
as well as elementary education and to the education of the Indians. 
These letters, found in the Astor Library, constitute no doubt the 
missing pamphlet referred to by Salmon: 3 "Letters on national sub- 
jects, auxiliary to universal education and scientific knowledge; 
addressed to Burwell Bassett, late member of the House of Repre- 
sentatives; Henry Clay, Speaker of the House of Representatives; 
and James Monroe, President of the United States of America. By 



1 Ibid., p. 187. 

1 Epitome, p. II. 

3 Salmon, Joseph Lancaster, p. 5. 



20 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

Joseph Lancaster, founder of the Lancasterian System of Educa- 
tion." 1 

The first letter is headed "National Institutions" and is addressed 
to Burwell Bassett, and the Friends of American Education, dated, 
Norfolk, Virginia, 11th month, 20th, 1819. The author desires to 
express his gratitude for the honors conferred by Congress by "prov- 
ing that the general prosperity of this country has been a subject of 
consideration ever since I landed." The measure advocated for the 
advancement of art, science and national resources is the foundation 
of a Washington National Museum. This museum should form a 
register of national resources, botanical, mineral, geological; and con- 
tain a collection of designs and engravings/ Patriotism should lead 
to generous donations. A small tax on sea-captains, merchants and 
travelers who neglect to bring specimens would secure a constant 
flow of gifts, and at the same time stimulate the spirit of patriotism. 
Through exchanges, state and college museums would be extended to 
every corner of the land, in extending scientific education, promoting 
agriculture, and aiding the arts and industries. 

The second letter dated, "Washington, 22d of 12th month, 1819," 
addressed to "Henry Clay, Speaker of the House of Representatives, 
U. S. A.," begins with a series of references to Cyrus, Solon, Lycurgus, 
Socrates, Moses, and Numa Pompilius. "These references are 
made to revive in thy classic mind, the charm of connection which may 
be found in the sentiments of great men, on subjects 
Education relating to the rise, progress or ruin of national char- 
acter." Then follows a tribute to the greatness of 
America, a prophecy of a still greater nation extending to the Pacific, 
and a suggestion that this is the critical moment for extending educa- 
tion and banishing ignorance. "Perhaps the period is already at 
hand, when the weight of the instructed mind in the nation will be 
estimated by the statemen as part of its effective strength." As a 
postscript are inserted the following verses on the Lancasterian 
system of education recited at a lecture in Congress Hall. 



1 Washington City, printed for the author by Jacob Gideon, Jr., 1820, pp. 
60. 



Introduction of the Lancasterian System Into New York 21 

Lancasterian System as "The Generous Plan" 

The Lion o'er his wild domains 
Rules by the terror of his eye — 
The eagle of the rock maintains 
By force his empire in the sky. 

The Shark, the tyrant of the flood, 
Pursues his prey with quenchless rage. 
Parent and young, unweaned from blood, 
Are still the same from age to age. 

Of all that live, and move and breathe, 
Man only rises o'er his birth, 
He looks around, above, beneath, 
At once the heir of Heaven and earth. 

Force, cunning, speed, which nature gave 
The various tribes throughout her plan, 
Life to enjoy — from death to save — 
These are the lowest powers of man. 

From strength to strength he travels on; 
He leaves the lingering Brute behind 
And when a few short years are gone, 
He soars, a disembodied mind. 

Destined his future course sublime 
Through nobler, brighter paths to run; 
With him, the final end of time, 
Is but eternity begun. 

What guides him in his high persuit, 
Opens, illumines, cheers his way? 
Discerns th' immortal from the brute, 
God's image from the mould of clay? 

'Tis knowledge, knowledge of the soul, 
Is power and liberty and peace; 
And, while the celestial ages roll, 
The joys of knowledge shall increase. 

Aid, then, the gen'rous plan 
Which spreads the light with universal beams; 
And through the human desert leads . 
Truth's living, pure, perpetual streams. 

Behold a new creation rise! 
New spirit breathed into the clod — 
Behold the voice of wisdom cries: 
"Man, know thyself, and Fear thy God." 

Montgomery. 



22 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

The third letter is addressed to "James Monroe, President of the 
United States of America, Washington, 22d of 1st month, 1820." 
The education of the Indians is the principal topic of this letter. 
Though Lancaster disclaims any personal acquaintance with the 
Indians, he ventures to urge the Lancasterian system of instruction 
as the solution of the Indian problem. It must be acknowledged 
that many practical suggestions are found in this letter. Indian 
teachers should be utilized, mechanical and agricultural 
Education schools should be established, practical instruction 
should be associated with theoretical, pictures should 
be largely employed, education should be social. 

The fourth and final letter is addressed to Burwell Bassett, dated 
"Lancasterian Institute, Baltimore, 29th of 2nd month, 1820." Scot- 
land is cited as an example of the value of universal 
Education education. The Lancasterian system offers the means 
of universal education in America. The new institute 
at Baltimore is described as an application of the system to higher 
education. 

New York was the scene of Lancaster's last, as well as his first, 
educational effort in America. His various attempts at educational 
leadership in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Venezuela, and Canada are 
described in the Epitome, and summarized by Salmon. 1 He died 
in New York in 1838, having been fatally injured in crossing Grand 
Street after a visit to School No. 7, in Chrystie Street. The critical 
value of Lancaster's visits may be indicated by his comments entered 
in school minute books. "Ninth month, 6. — Joseph Lancaster 
visited this school, and was most highly pleased with the exemplary 
behavior and order of the very interesting boys and 
an Inspector vou th who assemble here for instruction. In this 
school he has found, felt, and seen abundance to delight 
a father's eye and gratify the best feelings of a father's heart. If he 
is to take youth like these as a specimen of American native character, 
truly he may congratulate the citizens of New York and the American 
nation, that they possess youth of such high hopes and favorable 
capacity. May they ever do the same honor to their teachers and 
parents, and the same credit to these schools, and may the love and 
peace of God dwell with them, and they all become as diamonds of 
the purest water, enclosed within the pearl of greatest price." 2 

1 Salmon, Joseph Lancaster, Chap. II. 

2 Bourne, History of the Public School Society, p. 697. 



Introduction of the Lancasterian System Into New York 23 

"Ninth month, 6.— Joseph Lancaster. The most delightful con- 
duct and mental attention, good behavior and wise deportment of 
the highly estimable children and youth in this school, merit from me 
a tribute of respect which seems almost inexpressible. I have often 
been highly delighted and gratified with schools, but never more so 
than in my visit to this school. I congratulate their parents, friends, 
and teachers on the principles of good conduct, the love of learning, 
and also rectitude and virtue which I am satisfied are among them. 
There now are children and youth in this school who do the highest 
credit to themselves, to their teachers, and to these institutions that 
the most excellent conduct can do. May they go on and increase and 
prosper, till heaven shall rejoice and earth be glad for them; till 
knowledge shall abound in perfection among them, and they grow up 
to maturity, like their Redeemer, in favor with God and man. 

"Ninth month, 25. — Joseph Lancaster. School much increased. 
We love to see bees in swarms; it is a sure sign there will be more 
honey. Found the pupils as busy as bees in their writing with minds 
intent on working up as much improvement as possible." 1 

1 Ibid. 



IV 

ORGANIZATION OF THE NEW YORK LANCASTERIAN 
SCHOOLS, SCHOOL BUILDINGS AND EQUIPMENT 

When the New York Free School Society was in a position to erect 
school buildings the Lancasterian arrangement was followed. School 
Number 1 was erected in 1809, and was one hundred 
Buildings of an d twenty feet in length and fifty feet in width, cap- 
So •. able of accommodating five hundred children in the 
main room. School Number 2, erected in 1811, was 
eighty feet long and forty feet wide and accommodated three hundred 
children in the upper school. Each of these buildings had on a lower 
story living apartments and a school room accommodating one hun- 
dred and fifty. These rooms were occupied by girls' 
g schools, also on the Lancasterian plan, conducted by 
the Female Association. 
After the development of the Infant School in 1830 the typical 
New York school building consisted of three stories. The Infant 
and Primary rooms were on the ground floor, the for- 
s , , mer fitted with seats rising in tiers, the gallery as it 
it was called, seating two hundred children; the latter 
furnished with rows of forms facing the teacher's desk which was 
placed in the center of the room. The second floor was for the girls' 
school, the third for the boys'; the plan was the same for both, one 
large room with two or three recitation rooms. Simultaneous instruc- 
tion and monitorial methods were still dominant, and led to the reten- 
tion of the Lancasterian type of building. 1 

School buildings erected by the Board of Education after the new 
school law of 1842, were made to conform to the model of the old 
monitorial schools. The County Superintendent of 
of Education Common Schools, in a report to the Board of Educa- 
tion, 2 urges that buildings be divided into class rooms, 
or that at least folding doors, such as were then in use in the primary 



1 Manual, Public School Society, 1850, pp. 123-133. 

2 Document No. 5, 1846. 

24 



Organization of New York Lancasterian Schools 25 

department, should be used in the regular schools. The gallery may 
still be seen in some of the older buildings in New York. The large 
room has been divided into class rooms, in some cases by curtains 
only, generally by sliding doors. After practically all traces of the 
Lancasterian methods had vanished, the large rooms with sliding 
doors were retained as a feature in the new buildings, until lately, 
when it became the policy of the building department to plan new 
buildings with an assembly hall in the basement. 



Public School No. 17 
The building is 80 by 42 feet front. The buildings erected since this, 
have some slight deviation from these plans, principally by introducing addi- 
tional and larger class rooms. 

From Manual of the Public School Society, New York, 1850, p. 123 

The school room on the monitorial plan was in the form of a par- 
allelogram, the length being about twice the width. At one end was 
a platform with a teacher's desk, flanked on each side by a small 
desk for the principal monitors. The middle of the 
room was occupied with the forms, a passage being The S ^°^ 
left between the ends of the forms and the walls at 
least six feet broad, where the children formed half circles for reading. 



26 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

Each form seated from ten to twenty. The forms nearest the teach- 
er's desk were intended for the beginners forming the sand class. 
These desks had ledges in order to retain sand, and a hole at the end 




Plan of Grammar Department 
From Manual of the Public School Society, New York, 1850 

of each desk to permit the excess of sand to fall into a drawer. The 

Forms remaining desks were slightly inclined planes, from six to 

seven inches in width. Only the desks of the eighth class 

were supplied with inkstands made of lead and firmly fixed into the 



Organization of New York Lancasterian Schools 



27 




Ground Plan of Primary Department, Yards, Wood-Houses, etc. 

A — Primary School room — 39 by 38 feet. 
B — Infant School room — 39 by 30 feet. 
C — Room in Stair building for brooms, brushes, pails, &c. 
J — Boys' Wardrobe, i6}4 by 8 feet. 
K — Girls' Wardrobe, 12 yi by 8 feet. 
M — Gallery, 32 by 1 1 feet — seats for 200 children. 
N, N — Desks, each 16^ feet long — each 12 or 13 scholars. 
O — Teacher's table. 
L — Front doorway, or main entrance. 

The stations for the classes, when reading, is in the centre passage, front- 
ing the desks. 
All doors open outward. 

From Manual of the Public School Society, New York, 1830 



28 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 




«' 



o 

CM 



CO 



CO 



"ft* 



Organization of New York Lancasterian Schools 29 

desks. On the floor of the passage was a series of semi-circles marking 
the situation of groups which spelled out their reading lessons from 
the charts on the wall. To this form of groups was 

Scmi-circlps 

given the name of drafts. The alphabet wheel was a 
device for displaying letters to the sand class which faced the teach- 
er's desk. This wheel was a circular board about four 
feet in diameter on which were painted the letters of the *wheel 

alphabet. A circular desk with an oblong opening per- 
mitted only one letter to be seen at a time. 1 In all except the highest 
classes, slates were used instead of paper; when not in use they hung 
upon nails fixed to the desks. For many years after the founding 
of the Free School Society slates were imported from England. 

Organization of the School 

"The master," says Lancaster, "should be a silent bystander and 
inspector. What a master says should be done; but if he teaches on 
this system he will find the authority is not personal, — 
that when the pupils, as well as the schoolmaster, under- T , e 

stand how to act and learn on this system, the system, 
not the master's vague, discretionary, uncertain judgment, will be in 
practice. A command will be obeyed by any boy, because it is a 
command, and the whole school will obey the common, known com- 
mands of the school from being merely known as such, let who will 
give them. In a common school the authority of the master is per- 
sonal, and the rod is his sceptre. His absence is the immediate signal 
for confusion and in his absence, his assistants will rarely be minded. 
But in a school properly regulated and conducted on my plan, when 
the master leaves school, the business will go on as well in his absence 
as in his presence, because the authority is not personal. This mode 
of insuring obedience is a novelty in the history of education." 2 That 
this plan of rendering the teacher unnecessary was realized in the 
schools of the New York Society is evidenced by numerous entries 
in the minute book of School No. 2, showing the school to be in opera- 
tion in the absence of the teacher. There was complete reduction 
to system. 

The apparent success of the system in New York is attested in the 
Report on Monitorial Instruction to the Boston School Committee: 



1 Manual of the New York Free Schools, 1820. 

2 British System of Education, p. 45. 



30 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

" The advantages of the monitorial system in comparison with the old 
system, may briefly be thus stated. To the student it makes learning 
q , less irksome, by simplifying and facilitating his progress, it 

gives to instruction more interest, by alternation and var- 
iety of exercise, in which physical and intellectual action are combined; 
it keeps attention awake and interested, by permitting no moment of 
idleness or listlessness; its effects on the habits, character and intelli- 
gence of youth are highly beneficial; disposing their minds to industry, 
to readiness of attention, and to subordination thereby creating in 
early life, a love of order, preparation for business, and acquaintance 
with the relative obligations and duties both of pupils and instructor. 
To the master also, it renders teaching less irksome and more inter- 
esting, giving an air of sprightliness and vivacity to his duties, exciting 
the principles of emulation among his scholars, aiding him by the 




Monitor's Seat and Desk 

From Manual of the Free School Society, 1820 



Economy 



number of assistants he can thus employ, and, by relieving him from 
the constant necessity of direct supervision of every 
individual, capacitates him to concentrate his mind and 
efforts on doings and objects of the most importance, difficulty, and 
responsibility. To all which it may be added, though a consideration 
less important yet not to be overlooked, that it is an immense saving 
both of time and money, in consequence of the far greater numbers 
which can be taught as well by this mode, as a smaller number can 
by the former. It will be sufficient under this head to state that in 
New York, masters, in three distinct schools, teach fifteen hundred and 
forty-seven boys, being an average of upwards of five hundred each. 



Organization of New York Lancasterian Schools 31 

In our schools the same number of boys require seven schools and 
fifteen instructors. In New York a female teaches a school, on this 
principle, of four hundred. In our schools the average Efficiency 
number to an instructress is fifty-six. The success and 
progressive advancement in those schools, is asserted by men deemed 
competent judges, to be not less than ours." 1 

The manual of the Lancasterian system, issued by the Free School 
Society in 1820, contains twelve pages on the duties of the monitors. 
The manual of the New York Public School Society, as 
late as 1850, devotes eight pages to this topic. Monitors • lg20 
were either subordinate or general. The former undertook 
the instruction of the separate classes and maintained order amongst 
the pupils instructed. The latter took no part in the instruction of the 
pupils, but maintained 'order throughout the school. In 1820 the 
monitors were classified as follows: 

I. Subordinate Monitors II. General Monitors 

1. Monitors of classes I. General monitors of order 

2. Assistant monitors of classes 2. Monitor general of reading 

3. Monitors of reading 3. Monitor general of arithmetic 

4. Draught monitors 4. Monitor general of writing 

5. Monitors of arithmetic 

6. Monitors of writing 

Besides the above there were other officers, such as Dictator, Les- 
son fixers, Monitor of books, Librarian. 

When the Manual of 1850 was prepared, some modifications had 
been made in the monitorial system. In 1833, the course of study 
had been extended to include astronomy, algebra, geome- 
try, trigonometry and book-keeping; salaries were raised, T ssls , an 
assistant teachers appointed, and recitation rooms pro- 
vided. 2 The system of mutual instruction was retained, and the 
school taught in drafts by monitors, but this plan was 
now supplemented by class-room instruction and exami- . ? 
nations by principal and teachers. 3 According to the 
Manual of 1850 there were: 



Report on Monitorial Instruction to the Boston School Committee, 1828. 

2 28th Annual Report of Public School Society, 1833. 

3 37th Annual Report of Public School Society, 1842, p. 32. 



32 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

I. Monitors of instruction II. Monitors of mechanical opera- 
tions of the school 

1. Monitor general of reading i. Book monitors 

2. Monitor general of dictation 2. Street and yard monitors 

3. Monitor general of arithmetic 3. Monitors of ventilation 

4. Monitor general of writing 4, Fuel and fire monitors 

5. Draft monitors of reading and 
ciphering 

Teachers were advised to "further promote the well being of 
the school by extending the management by monitors to minor mat- 
ters," recording tardy scholars, providing water, etc. 1 

The later organization of the schools and the relation of the teacher 
and monitors are described in the annual report of the society for 
1842: "There are in each school a principal, assistant and two junior 
teachers, denominated first and second monitors; the first being in 
some cases a 'passed monitor.' The principal and assistant alter- 
nately have the general government of the school in the main room, 
and teach divisions in the recitation or class rooms, while the monitors 
have charge of a division in the recitation rooms, or assist in the main 
room. Two sets of teaching monitors are chosen monthly from the 
advanced classes, who are employed in teaching the lower divisions 
in reading, spelling, definitions, arithmetic and sometimes geography; 
the teaching monitors who have performed these duties, are received 
into the recitation room for their own instruction; the classes also 
which they have taught are in larger divisions, at stated times, per- 
sonally instructed by the principal, assistant, and paid monitors; 
part of them in the recitation rooms, and part in the main room; the 
whole school thus in four or five large divisions receiving extended in- 
struction, and undergoing a review of the lessons taught them by the 
monitors. This is sometimes varied by the practice of having part 
of them thus engaged in the class rooms, while those occupying the 
main room are engaged in some general exercise, as writing copies 
on slates or simultaneous instruction in geography on the blank 
maps of the hemispheres on the walls of the school room." 2 

The growing distrust of the monitorial system is shown in several 
of the reports of the Public School Society. "The trustees have long 
1 imitations of keen aware that, however peculiarly appro- 

Monitorial System priate the monitorial system may be, and is, to 



1 Manual of the Public School Society, 1850, pp. 73-75. 

2 37th Annual Report, Public School Society, 1842, pp. 46-47. 



Organization of New York Lancasterian Schools 33 

a school of several hundred children under charge of a single 
teacher, conducted with primary reference to a very limited ex- 
penditure, and confined in its course to the rudiments of knowledge — 
to give adequate and appropriate instruction to all the scholars re- 
quired the employment of additional teachers, and especially so if 
a new liberal course of study were introduced. . . . The trustees 
have decided to employ a well qualified assistant teacher in each of the 
Public Schools, and to introduce several new branches of study." 1 

" By modifications adopted in the revised system of mutual instruc- 
tion, that only right principle of teaching, 'mind acting on mind' is 
brought effectually into operation on all pupils, for although this is 
somewhat operative under the course of monitorial teaching by the 
Lancasterian and Madras systems, yet not sufficiently so to give con- 
fidence to either as a thorough system of instruction, their mechanical 
processes doing well, only to a limited extent; the varied plans, how- 
ever, of Dr. Bell for the extension of mutual instruction, being more 
in the spirit of the science of teaching than those of Lancaster, may 
favorably except the Madras System, from the full force of this obser- 
vation, while both wrought into one, with modifications, may effect 
improved results. They are thus modified in the Public Schools, by 
which like advantages are given to all, by personal instruction from the 
teachers, and the review of monitor's work, checking neglect, and 
prompting him to efficiency in his duties." 2 

Classification of Pupils 

Though Lancaster mechanized the process of instruction, he de- 
veloped a flexible plan of grading and promotion. Indeed the me- 
chanical nature of the Lancasterian plan of instruction 
readily permitted an extremely flexible plan of grading , Subjects 
and promotion. Pupils were classified separately for 
reading and arithmetic and were promoted whenever proficient in 
the work of a class. To recommend for promotion was the work of 
the monitors. The annual reports of the Free School Society and of 
the Public School Society give statistics of promotion. One of the 
last tables of this kind appears in the 42nd report, 1848, page 11: 



1 28th Annual Report, 1833. 

2 420! Annual Report, 1848, p. 43. 



34 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

"Children promoted: 

3878 from the 1st to the 2nd class 
3423 from the 2nd to the 3rd class 
3748 from the 3rd to the 4th class 
3286 from the 4th to the 5th class 
2000 from the 5th to the 6th class 
2427 from the 6th to the 7th class 
1808 from the 7th to the 8th class 
1 123 from the 8th to the 9th class 
3230 to writing on paper 
3906 to addition and subtraction 
3024 to multiplication and division 
1934 to compound of first four rules 
12 1 6 to reduction 
1996 to proportion 
15 1 6 to practice 
1588 to interest 

N. B The first class learns the alphabet; the ninth class is the highest 
reading class. Of the children in the Public as distinguished from the Primary 
Schools and Primary Departments there are now — 

8742 learning Geography 
5493 learning Grammar 

66 learning Book-keeping 
1242 learning History 
3040 learning Astronomy 
461 learning Algebra 
59 learning Geometry" 1 

With the decline of the monitorial system this flexible system of 

grading and promotion was gradually replaced by the 
jn^o-e fa mg present class system. In the Ward Schools of 1855 

the classes were as follows: 
Class 5, alphabet and its combinations into words and syllables; 
lessons on objects and common things. Class 4, read and spell print, 
definitions, Roman numbers, tables in addition. Class 3, simple 

rules in arithmetic including multiplication; reading 
School^ continued; slate writing. Class 2, arithmetic through 

simple subtraction; geography commenced; writing 
and drawing on slate and blackboard. Class 1, tables of weight, 
measures, etc.; simple division; mental arithmetic; geography; ele- 
mentary science and vocal music. 

Class 5, review geography, etc. Class 4, grammar commenced; 
fractions. Class 3, United States history. Class 2, mineralogy, 

J 42d Annual Report, Public School Society, 1848, p. 11. 



Organization of New York Lancasterian Schools 35 

chemistry, geology. Class 1, algebra, geometry, 

natural history, general history and book-keeping. 1 Schools 

The grading of the Public Schools in 1867 was as 

follows : 

Primary Schools 

Fifth Grade — Alphabet Class — alphabet and elementary sounds; 

counting and adding by ones and twos. Lessons in common objects. 

Fourth Grade — Primer Class — reading and spell- 

r i i i t t i t ■ , Primary Schools 

ing from charts, blackboards and primers; ele- - m lg6 

mentary sounds. Adding by twos, threes, fours 
and fives; also taking away ones, twos and threes from greater num- 
bers. Tables. Lessons in morals and manners. 

Third Grade — The last half of the First and first half of the Second 
Reader. Simple definitions; also spelling by elementary sounds; use 
of common marks in sentences read. Roman numbers through C, 
D and M. Numeration through 100,000,000; addition through ex- 
amples of six or seven short columns; tables through 6 times 12. 

Second Grade — Second Reader. Spelling — meaning of words; their 
use in short sentences; punctuation continued. Through subtraction 
and multiplication by one figure; tables through 12 times 12. Draw- 
ing and writing on slates — from copies on blackboard. Morals and 
manners continued. 

First Grade — Reading. Lessons same grade as the last half of Sec- 
ond Reader. Spelling and definition — use of words in oral sentences. 
Through multiplication and division by two figures; simple applica- 
tions. Tables — divisions, time, weights and measures and Federal 
money. Geography — outline maps — the hemispheres, North and 
South America; definitions and description. 2 

Grammar Schools 

Sixth Grade — Third Reader. Arithmetic — through simple rules 
and Federal money — practical applications. Outlines of North 
America including United States. 

Fifth Grade — Reading similar to sixth. Arith- . g6 * 

metic — through common fractions; practical 
applications and analysis. Full knowledge of the United States and 
other divisions of North America. 

Fourth Grade — Fourth Reader. Spelling and definitions, pre- 

1 Report of New York City Superintendent of Common Schools, 1855. 

2 Boese, Public Education in the City of New York, 1869, pp. 134-5. 



36 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

fixes. Arithmetic through decimal fractions, exercises in calculation. 
Geography — South America. Grammar commenced. 

Third Grade — Fourth Reader. Spelling and definitions from the 
reading lessons, instruction in prefixes of derivative words. Arith- 
metic — through the compound rules and reduction. Geography 
both local and descriptive, through Europe. English grammar — 
the analysis and parsing of sentences with simple phrase or clause 
adjuncts. United States History — early discoveries and colonial. 

Second Grade — Fifth Reader. Spelling — definitions, from the 
reading lesson, etymology. Arithmetic — through percentage. Ge- 
ography — local and descriptive, through Asia, Africa and Oceanica. 
English Grammar — analysis and parsing, correction of false syntax. 
History — war of the Revolution. Algebra (boys only) — through 
fractions. 

First Grade — Reading, spelling and etymology continued. Arith- 
metic — problems in interest, discount, etc., (boys, through evolution). 
Geography reviewed, with outlines in physical geography. English 
grammar continued. History — outlines completed and reviewed. 
Astronomy. 1 

School Sessions 

The long vacations of the present were unknown in the schools of 
the Free School Society and the Public School Society. The author- 
Vacations * zec ^ holidays were the first of January, the first of May, 
the fourth of July, and the twenty-fifth of December. 2 
Saturday was a half holiday, afterwards an entire holiday. 3 The 
reading of the minutes of the school committees reveals the fact that 
in the early days of the schools the length of the summer vacation 
was contingent upon the cleaning and whitewashing of the schoolhouse 
or a visitation of cholera or other epidemics. The official summer 
vacation in 1826 and later was three weeks in August. 4 

The hours of daily sessions varied in winter and summer. In 
1807 they were eight to twelve and three to six, from May to Novem- 
ber; nine to twelve, and two to five from December to 
Hours April. 5 According to the by-laws of 1826 and 1836, the 

hours were nine to twelve, and two to five, from March 
to November; and nine to three, with a half hour at noon from De- 
cember to February. * 

1 Boese, Public Education in the City of New York, 1869, pp. 137-140. 

2 By-laws of the Public School Society, 1826-1836. 

3 4 Ibid. 

5 Sketch of New York Free School, 1807. 



Organization of New York Lancasterian Schools 37 

Order of Exercises in Grammar Schools 

A definite assignment of time for the daily exercises is not given 
in the early manuals of the society; but, as the Manual of 1820, in 
most particulars, closely follows the Manual of the British and Foreign 
School Society of 1816, which does contain a daily program, it is pos- 
sible by a comparison of the two manuals to gain a general idea of 
the daily routine in a New York school of about 1820. 

In 1820 the Society required the teacher to hold a class for monitors 
from six to eight or from seven to nine a. m. At 8.45 the Monitor 
General of Order opens the doors for the monitors, and at A M 

9, admits the children. After the reading of the Scriptures, Admission 
the Monitor General of Order calls over the names of the Scriptures 
monitors and appoints others in place of absentees. He directs the 
monitors to give out pencils to the boys of their classes. The next 
command is "Clean slates." After the slates are sufficiently cleaned, 
the Monitor General gives a signal to leave off by blowing 

his whistle. The pupils then put their hands behind them, prepara- 
The next command is "Monitors inspect." The monitors tion for 
examine the slates of their classes, and then stand on their 
benches to show the Monitor General that the inspection is finished. 

At the command, "Monitors begin," the monitor of the D - . .. 
eighth class dictates a word; then the monitors of the 
seventh, sixth, fifth, fourth, third and second in succession. The class 
monitors mark their class registers and bring the lists to the Monitor 
General, who enters the numbers in the school register. At 
the close of the muster, the direction of the school is taken M 9 * 
by the Monitor General of Reading, who appoints the 
reading monitors for the day, hangs up his charts or reading boards, 
by which the children are to form semi-circles, and directs 
the drafts (groups) to their places. Each draft is under 
the charge of a monitor of reading. Classes one to four ea ing 
always read the large boards composing part of the spelling book. 
Classes five to eight read boards of connected reading in the morning, 
and spelling lessons in the afternoon. 

At the direction, "Monitors repeat," the Reading Moni- 

• i ■ -i 10.00 

tors take down the boards and question their pupils. Review 

The pupils are lined up against the wall and the Monitor- 
General of Reading distributes merit tickets to each one who I0 - * 5 
wears the badge designating him to be first in the class. 



38 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

Classes 1 to 5 have writing until the end of the session. Classes 

10.30 6 to 8 have arithmetic. The time is divided between 

Writing s i a te work at the desks and work in drafts. The Moni- 

itor-General of Arithmetic directs the movements of the 

drafts, and distributes the reward tickets. 

Orders for closing are given by the Monitor-General of Order, 
Dismissal who distributes merit tickets to those who have behaved 
well, and detains those who have behaved badly. The 
orders of dismissal are: Look, Out, Front, Put on hats, Hands down, 
Look, Go. Each class marches out with the class monitor at the 
head. 

2 p. m. Dictation » 

2.30 Muster, Reading 

3.00 Review 

3. 15 Close of Reading 

3- 15 Writing 

Order of Exercises in a Primary School, about 1850 

qam Reading of the Scriptures, not to exceed five minutes* 
Reading of Rules and Persuasive Charge. Inspection of 
pupils for cleanliness. 

Reading and spelling in drafts. These exercises are con- 
ducted by the Draft Monitors under the direction of the 
Assistant Teacher and the Monitor- General of the Reading. The 
drafts contain six children. Large lesson charts are used. 

Dictation. This is conducted by the Assistant Teacher or 
by the Monitor-General of Dictation. The school is pre- 
pared by the following orders: Attention, Take Slates, Clean Slates, 
Hands Fixed, Take Pencils. The dictator then names the words 
on the board; those who are to write the word repeat it in concert. 
The teacher then names the letters; these are repeated by the class, 
and after the children name the letters as pointed out by the teacher, 
they are told to write. The teacher then passes to the other classes 
in succession, and leaves the correction of mistakes to the monitors. 
With due rapidity each class may spell eighteen words during the 
half hour. 

I0 Recess and oral instruction. The pupils are permitted to 

go to the playground where they are allowed free play or 

"little amusing games of exercise under the direction of the teacher." 1 

1 Manual, 1850, p. 121. 



Organization of New York Lancasterian Schools 39 

The oral instruction consists of lessons on common things — object 

lessons. 
Reading and spelling in drafts. 1 1 . oo 

Writing copies, drawing, etc. Slates are generally used for l l 

writing in the Primary School, though writing in sand is 

followed to some extent as late as 1842. 1 One side of the slate is 

ruled with horizontal lines, and also oblique guide lines. The copy 

consists of a printed alphabet board. 2 The procedure is similar to 

that of the dictation exercises. Every thing is done in order, and 

all details are attended to by monitors. 

Recess for lunch. 12.00 

Oral instructions in tables and common things. Various 

methods are employed according to the class — the numeral 

frame, the blackboard, charts and dictation. 

Reading and spelling in drafts. ip.m. 

Dictation for writing on slates. 1 . 30 

Reading and spelling in drafts. 2.00 

Dictation. 2.30 

In addition to the above program the principal or teacher may be 

engaged in giving instructions to the monitors or in teaching a class. 
In 1852 the program of a Primary School under the Public School 

Society remained practically the same: 
Reading of the Scriptures and other exercises 9 a. m. 

Read and spell (Monitors) 9.30 

Dictation (Slates) 10.00 

Recess and oral instruction 10.30 

Read and spell in drafts 1 1 . 00 

Writing copies and drawing 1 1 . 30 

Recess for lunch 12.00 

Oral instruction in tables and common things 12.30 

Read and spell in drafts 1 . 00 

Dictation (Slates) 1.30 

Read and spell in drafts 2.00 

Dictation 3 2 . 30 

According to the Manual of 1850, page 90, the order of exercises 

of the upper schools (the last three classes of the nine courses) was as 

follows: 



1 37th Report of Public School Society, p. 43. 2 Ibid. 

3 Report, New York City Superintendent of Common Schools, 1852. 



40 



Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 



Time Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday 

9.00 Read and prepare for exercises 

9.05 Astronomy Astronomy 

Geography Geography Geography Geography Geography 

10.00 Arithmetic Arithmetic Arithmetic Arithmetic Arithmetic 

10.45 Recess. Take attendance and ventilate thoroughly 

11.00 Dictation Dictation Dictation Dictation Dictation 



1 1 . 45 Writing Compo- 

on paper sition 
12.30 Recess — D inner 



Writing Compo- Writing 

on paper sition on paper 



1. 00 Grammar Drawing Grammar Drawing 



2.00 Reading 

2-45 
3-00 



Reading Reading Reading 

History History 

Absentees sent for; closing school 



Grammar 
Reading 



V 

METHODS OF TEACHING 

Reading 

In reading, the school was divided into eight classes: 1st class learn- 
ing the alphabet; 2nd class, words and syllables of two letters; 3rd 
class, words and syllables of three letters; 4th class, Eieht 

words and syllables of four letters; 5th class, reading Classes for 
lesson of one syllable; 6th class, reading lesson of two Reading 

syllables; 7th class, the Testament; 8th class, the Bible. 1 

The only business of the first class was to learn the letters of the 
alphabet. Two methods were employed: (1) Writing from dicta- 
tion. The children were seated on the forms belonging 
to the first class; opposite them was a large board or p p, e 

alphabet wheel which displayed the letters to be written. 
Roman characters were used. At the dictation of the monitor the 
letter was traced, with a short stick, in the sand. The monitor exam- 
ined the work and smoothed out that which was badly 
done. To facilitate learning a beginner was placed next Reading and 
to a child who had made some progress. (2) Reading Combined 
from boards. The children stood in semicircles and 
named the letters pointed out by the monitors. If a mistake was 
made a change of place occurred. 

The steps employed in learning the alphabet are thus described in 
an early account of the New York Free Schools: 

"Ten children can be accommodated at this table; each scholar 
has a stick given to him about the thickness of a quill, and four inches 
long, with which he is to write the letters on the sand. 
The alphabet is divided into three parts, viz., the per- T . , 

pendicular letters, I H T L E F i and 1, form the first 
lesson; the triangular letters, AVWMNZKYXvwkyz and x 
form the second; and the circular letters, OUCJGDPBRQS, 
abodpqgcmnhtursf and j, form the third class. These are 
in succession placed before the class, which is under the direction of a 



1 Manual of the Lancasterian System, New York, 1820, p. 20. 

41 



42 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

monitor, who, with an audible voice, desires them to form the first 
letter; each scholar now makes his best effort, which, perhaps, is a 
very awkward one; but the monitor pointing out the defects and oc- 
casionally printing the letter for them, teaches them to retrace it; 
after repeated trials upon the same letter, the class is soon able to 
form it readily, and with neatness. The next letters of the lesson 
are in succession placed before them, and taught in the same manner. 
It may be necessary to observe, that on no account whatever must a 
pupil pass on to another letter, until he is able to print the first with 
neatness. In being thus exercised in forming the letters, the pupil 
will in a short time know them; and he is not only enabled to print 
letters, but also learns them sooner than in the usual mode of teaching. 
If the class is continual in its application to forming letters on the sand, 
it will be found that the employment will be insipid and burdensome. 
It should therefore be varied by having the class several times a day 
called from their seats and formed into a circle around a lesson, which 
is printed in large letters, and suspended from the wall, in 
Board such a manner that the whole class can view it. The moni- 
tor then points to the first letter, and asks aloud, 'What 
letter is that?' The boy at the head of the class answers first, when, 
if he should make a mistake, the question is put to the second boy, 
and so on until some one in the class answers aright; in 
Taki which case the boy takes precedency in the class. This 
exercise soon perfects them in the knowledge of their letters 
and is also a pleasing relaxation." 1 

In 1842 these methods were still considered "very intellectual." 
"The alphabet is taught by varied methods; by the printed lesson 
sheet, by single letters on binder's boards, and 
Intellectual ^y tracing the letters in white sand, lightly 

covering a part of the writing desk painted 
black for the purpose. This is called the sand desk. This method, 
beside being a useful one in varying the exercises of the abcedarians, 
is well calculated to aid mental development, calling into exercise 
analysis and comparison, and is a very intellectual method of teaching 
the alphabet." 2 

"The children having learned their letters are removed to a higher 
class by the inspecting monitor, and are taught to spell and read 



1 Account of Free School Society, 1814, pp. 51-52. 

2 37th Annual Report, Public School Society, 1842, p. 42. 



Method of Teaching 



43 







2 






03 

IT 



o 

CO 



CO 



CO 






44 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

monosyllables. This class also makes use of the 
Class y sano - WI "i tm g- The monitors direct the pupils to 

make two letters, b-a, and teach them that b-a spells 
ba. In the circles the class is drilled in pronouncing the words pre- 
viously written in the sand. When a class has arrived at the dignity 
Slates °^ a wor d of two syllables, slates are substituted for 

sand. Later the expert syllabic readers are introduced 
to the Testament." 

There was nothing incidental about the teaching of reading and 
writing — it was the sole occupation of the younger children. "While 

the children are too young, or too inexperienced to be 
Variety taught Arithmetic, their spelling, reading, and writing 

should continue without any intermission." 2 This con- 
stituted the school work for the six-year-old children until the influ- 
ence of the Pestalozzian movement was brought to bear in the founda- 
tion of the Infant School. 

Books were used in only the two highest classes of the primary 
schools. For the others, Lancaster's economical plan of wall charts 

was employed. According to the minutes of the com- 
Material mittee for Public School No. 2, classes visited read the 

New Testament (John 15 was read in 1824 by children 
six and eight years of age), Isaiah, Parnell's Hermit, Goldsmith's 
Traveler, Gray's Elegy and Murray's English Reader. 

According to the Manual of 1850, the alphabet was taught in con- 
nection with reading. Although the sand writing of the lowest 

classes had given way to the use of slates, the general 
Methods method does not seem to have departed very widely 

in 1850 from the earlier Lancasterian form. The three lowest 

classes were taught from lesson cards, twenty-four 
lessons of spelling and easy reading. The first four cards had the 
alphabet on the margin. "The syllables and words comprising 
these first lessons are to be spelled by pointing out the letters on the 
margin, and naming them, and then pronouncing or reading the 
syllables or words in the reading lesson, when pointed out." 3 This 
was done in drafts according to the monitorial plan. "The lively, 
natural and intelligible popular tales of Miss Edgeworth are especially 

1 Account of Free School Society, 1814, pp. 52, 55. 

2 Ibid. 

3 Manual, 1850, p. 21. 



Method of Teaching 



45 




Moveable Stand. 




Alphabet- Wheel. 




Bench with holes for Hats. 
2 

From Manual of the Free School Society, 1820 



46 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

useful as early reading lessons." 1 Before reading a lesson all difficult 
words are to be pronounced and spelled, with repronunciation of 
the syllables until the completion of the word. 

Nearly half a century of Lancasterian system with Lancaster's 
motto, "A place for everything and everything in its place," promi- 
nently displayed in every school room, resulted in mechanical refine- 
ments which surpassed even those of the noted founder of the system. 
For example, see Book Manual of 1850, as follows: 

"The pupil should stand erect — his heels near together, — toes 

turned out, — and his eyes directed to the face of the person speaking 

to him. Fig. 1. Represents the Book-Monitor with a 

M j pile of books across his left arm, with the backs from him, 

and with the top of the page to the right hand. 

"Fig. 2. The Book-Monitor, with the right hand hands the book 
to the pupil, who receives it with the right hand, with the back of 
the book to the left, and then passes it into the left hand, where it is 
held with the back upwards, and with the thumb extended at an 
angle of forty-five degrees with the edge of the book (as in Fig. 2), 
until a further order is given. 

"Fig. 3. When the page is given out, the book is turned by the 
thumb on the side; and, while held with both hands, is turned with 
the back downwards, with the thumbs meeting across the leaves, 
at a point judged to be nearest the place to be found. On opening the 
book the left hand slides down to the bottom, and thence to the middle 
where the thumb and little finger are made to press on the two oppo- 
site pages. If the pupil should have thus lit upon the page sought 
for, he lets fall the right hand by the side, and his position is that of 
Fig. 3. 

"Fig. 4. But, if he has opened short of the page required the 
thumb of the right hand is to be placed near the upper corner of the 
page, as seen in fig. 4. while the forefinger lifts the leaves to bring 
into view the number of the page. If he finds that he has not raised 
enough, the forefinger and thumb hold those already raised, while 
the second finger lifts the leaves, and brings them within grasp of the 
thumb and finger. When the page required is found, all the fingers 
are to be passed under the leaves, and the whole turned at once. 
Should the pupil, on the contrary, have opened too far, and be obliged 
to turn back, he places the right thumb, in like manner, on the left 
hand page, and the leaves are lifted as before described. 



1 Manual, 1850, p. 32. 



Method of Teaching 



47 




< 

a 
w 

o 

O 

03 



CO 



CO 



48 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

"Fig. 5. Should the book be old, or so large as to be wearisome to 
hold, the right hand may sustain the left, as seen in fig. 5. 

"Figs. 6, 7. While reading, as the eye rises to the top of the right 
hand page, the right hand is brought to the position seen in fig. 4, 
and, with the forefinger under the leaf, the hand is slid down to the 
lower corner, and retained there during the reading of this page, as 
seen in fig. 6. This also is the position in which the book is to be 
held when about to be closed; in doing which, the left hand, being 
carried up to the side, supports the book firmly and unmoved, while 
the right hand turns the part it supports over on the left thumb, as 
seen in fig. 7. The thumb will then be drawn out from between the 
leaves, and placed on the cover; when the right hand will fall by the 
side as seen in fig. 2. 

"Fig. 8. But if the reading has ended, the right hand retains the 
book, and the left hand falls by the side, as seen in fig. 8. The book 
will now be in position to be handed to the Book-Monitor, who re- 
ceives it in his right hand, and places it on his left arm, with the back 
towards his body. The books are now in the most suitable situation 
for being passed to the shelves or drawers, where, without being 
crowded, they should be placed with uniformity and care. 

"In conclusion, it may be proper to remark, that however trivial 
these minute directions may appear to some minds, it will be found 
on experience, that books thus treated, may be made to last double 
the time that they will do, under the usual management in schools. 
Nor is this attainment of a correct and graceful mode of handling a 
book, the only benefit received by the pupil. The use of this manual 
is calculated to beget a love of order and propriety; and disposes 
him more readily to adopt the habit generally, of doing things in a 
methodical and systematic manner." 1 

An early number of the Academician gives an interesting instance 
of imitation of Lancasterian methods of teaching spelling and writing. 
"To accommodate our pupils with class 
Lancastrian Methods telegraphs or tables on which they write 
their exercise, we have suspended against 
the wall in the school room large slates or boards, stained black, about 
four feet square on which they write with pencils or fine chalk. The 
classes composed of eight or ten each, after they have performed the 
regular duties of the school, assemble in a circular form around the 



Manual, Public School Society, 1850, pp. 97-98. 



Method of Teaching 49 

telegraphs and each one writes down his lesson before his class com- 
panions, who are always ready to criticise any fault or inaccuracy he 
may commit, and he who corrects the error takes the precedence. 
This group of inspectors detects and corrects all mistakes. It is 
impossible for any one to pass over his lesson carelessly, without being 
reminded of it and compelled to correct omissions. The 'Juvenile 
Expositor' furnishes them with ample exercises. Each pupil holding 
it in his hand, except the one who is to perform his lesson in writing 
in the presence of his class. In this manner they go through all their 
lessons, making alternately one writer, one class leader or dictator 
and eight or nine inspectors." 1 

An experience in the life of Rowland Hill will serve to illustrate 
the weak point in the teaching of reading on the Monitorial Plan: 
"I remember how, at the age of eight, I was myself 
set for a short time to teach some smaller children M ea ." es . s ? p , e 
to read. The book we used was Mrs. Barbauld's 
"Early Lessons." We came to the word mezereon. I was ashamed 
to own that I did not know how it was pronounced. With great 
gravity I informed the class that this was a word that no one knew 
how to read. So far as I can remember there was no doubting Thomas 
present." 2 

The educational results were as should have been anticipated. 
"Thousands of the children," said Commissioner Wood," leave school 
without being able to read or write. History and R , 

geography should be taught by reading books. Chil- 
dren read miserable twaddle. What I want to do is to make the 
children interested, I want the children to educate themselves. In 
our system of education we do not generate in the children a desire 
and love of self-culture. Without that they will go forth in the 
world without being educated and instructed at all." 3 

Dictation 

In the Lancasterian plans, dictation was employed in the teaching 
of spelling, reading, writing and arithmetic. The results of dictation 
were tested by interrogation in drafts. With the introduction of 

1 Academican, Vol. I, p. 114. 

2 Hill, G. B., Life of Rowland Hill, p. 54. 

3 Commissioner Wm. Wood, in address delivered at the organization meet- 
ing of the Department of Public Instruction, New York, 1871. 



50 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

teachers, charts and books, the necessity for dictation would appar- 
ently diminish to a very considerable extent. But, as is 
Tj ar y the case with so many subjects in the schools, the disap- 

pearance of a practical value is the occasion for proclaim- 
ing an educational value. In 1850 dictation was required three half 
hours daily in the primary schools and forty minutes daily in the 
upper schools. The subjects for dictation were letters, 
in 18^0 syllables, words, occasionally entire sentences, bills and 

receipts. The words were spelled by the dictator. 
As a statement of value from the standpoint of formal discipline 
the Manual of 1850 cannot be outdone: "Every teacher and assistant 
is called upon to make this exercise (Dictation) a matter 
Discipline °^ caxe ^ study, on account of its high utility, as a 
means of mental and physical culture. It awakens the 
attention, excites intellectual activity, and develops the dormant 
energies of children more effectually, and more agreeably, than can 
be done by any other school exercise whatever. You have in it — 
silence, the first requisite of good order, the erect, easy, and appro- 
priate posture — the eye all alive to catch the first signal, — the muscles 
all set and braced, for the quick and exact movement. As the eye 
rests on the word on the board, the mind begins its operations; when 
it is pronounced, the ear lends its aid; — when each letter is enunciated, 
the analyzing process is required, and the memory is laid under con- 
tribution; — when the response of each falls upon his ear, another im- 
pulse is given; and, finally, there is the manual process of writing the 
word on the slate. In these successive steps, we find the eye, the 
ear, the tongue and the hand, aiding and impelling the mind through 
a series of exercises of the highest importance in expanding and train- 
ing the intellect. During Dictation, when properly and energeti- 
cally performed, (and it must be done with dispatch), the child can 
get no chance to play, sleep, be idle, or do mischief. The process is, 
itself, the best and most perfect drill for order." 1 

The mechanical appliances for dictation indicate the firm position 

held by Lancasterian devices for nearly half a century. The following 

is a list of words for the purpose of dictation: — "the 

Boards Boards on which they are printed are % °f an mcn m 

thickness, all of the same width, but of four different 

lengths— each board has a brass socket inserted in the lower edge, 



1 Manual, Public School Society, 1850, pp. 25-26. 



Method of Teaching 



51 



to prevent its wearing by moving on the pivot on which it is placed 
when in use. They are kept in a box 19>£ by 14>^ and 6 inches deep — 
on the sides of the box are grooves, for the purpose of separating the 
Boards, and preventing them from rubbing. The Dictation Boards 
are also used as writing copies. 









"First Set 














7 by 6 








is 




no 




so 




in 


it 


sea 
see 


go 


be 
bee 

Second Set 
8 by 6 


sow 


of 
off 


inn 


dig 




hot 




boy 




cat 


fig 




not 




man 




rat 


tax 




dog 




bad 




eye 


wax 




hog 




lad 




ear 


ink 




pen 


Third Set 
ii by 6 


son 




sun 


pink 




rain 




cake 




hand 


rose 




snow- 




bake 




feet 


pail 




look 




ship 




ford 


hail 


brave 
cave 


gaze 


head 
hair 


boat 


Mary 
girl 


bird 








Fourth Set 












14 by 6 








father 




leaf 




flour 




calf 


mother 




leaves 




flower 




calves 


jump 




lard 




brother 




uncle 


quick 




follow 




sister 




aunt 


beef 




fifth 




butter 




cheese 


mutton 




ninth 




cream 




milk" 1 



Writing 
In addition to the employment of writing in connection with read- 
ing and spelling, the children, under the direction of monitors, imi- 
tated copper-plate copies. The claim of the Manual of 1814 
(p. 56) that the pupils attain a considerable degree of per- Copies 
fection by writing on slates, is open to question in view of 



1 Manual, Public School Society, 1850, pp. 117-118. 



52 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

a report of 1818. "The children are very deficient in writing and 

much more so than some years ago." 1 It does not 

Results seem that much progress had been made by 1825, 

when the committee of School Number 2 found it 

necessary to regrade the school "according to proficiency in writing." 

They found that "some boys in the upper classes though well advanced 

in reading and spelling were found unable to write with facility what 

was dictated to their class, so that their further improvement was 

much retarded." 2 

In 1850 writing in the primary schools was still confined to sand 

and to slates which were ruled horizonally and obliquely. The 

script characters were displayed on a large board. 

• r T Y^5 Copies were also written on the slates by the teacher, 

in 1850 r J 

The slate work of the lowest classes continued to be 
in Roman characters. In the upper schools the more advanced 
pupils were promoted to writing on paper. The copies were taken 
from large copy boards, with the inscriptions of an edifying tendency: 
"Thou God seest me." "Religion is the foundation of peace." 
"Emulation is laudable." "Neglect no means of improvement." 

Monitors were still in use to aid in the mechanical side, but the 
instruction was given by teachers. The principal change in method 
was the supplementing of dictation and imitation by interrogation. 

"Q. What should be the form of those capital letters whose bottom 
curves turn to the left? Ans. A circular form. 

Q. How high should the curves be formed? Ans. 
Writing Taught Ha]f ^ ^ h ^ ^ j itself. 

by Questions ° 

Q. What form should be given to those letters 

which end with a curve turning to the right? Ans. The form of 
capital O. 

Q. How high should this curve be made? Ans. Half as high as 
the letter. 

Q. With what characters should we commence the capitals F, H, 
K and T, etc.? Ans. A character similar to the semi-capital N. 

Q. With what characters do we end the n, V, W? Ans. With a 
character similar to small i." 3 



1 Report of Committee on New York Free School, 1818. 

2 Minutes of Committee of Public School Number 2, Apr. 26, 1825. 

3 Manual, 1850, p. 114. 



Method of Teaching 53 

Arithmetic 

The classification for arithmetic was entirely independent of the 
classification for reading. Promotions also were independent. Year 

after year until 1848, the reports of the Free School 
Promotion 11 Society state the number of promotions during the year 

from each of the nine reading classes, and in separate 
lists the promotions in arithmetic according to the following classes: 

(1) Addition and Subtraction (5) Reduction 

(2) Addition and Subtraction (6) Rule of Three 

(3) Multiplication and Division (7) Practice 

(4) Compound of Four First Rules (8) Interest 

The arithmetic classes did not include the younger children, who 
were occupied with only reading and writing, and spelling. 

The teaching was entirely monitorial. Pupils first learned to 
copy figures from the blackboard. Addition was taught by the dicta- 
tion of numbers to be added and also the answers. As 
the monitor read from his key and inspected the slates, Method 

the operation was deemed infallible. This new method 
of teaching arithmetic, Sydney Smith declares to be the greatest 
of Lancaster's improvements, and "applicable to the whole circle 
of human knowledge." 1 So completely was the plan elaborated that 
"any boy of eight years old who can barely read writing, and numer- 
ate well, is by means of the guide containing the sums, and the key 
thereto, qualified to teach the first four rules of arithmetic, simple 
and compound, if the key is correct, with as much accuracy as Mathe- 
maticians who have kept school for twenty years." 2 

"Another method of teaching the simple rules of arithmetic, and 
one which should be frequently resorted to, is in the use of the black- 
board. The class having written the sum on their 
slates, and attended to casting it up, are now called up Blackboard 
by the monitor to exercise in that manner. The same 
sum is written with chalk on the board, large enough to be seen by 
the whole class. The monitor points to the first columns, when the 
head boy adds aloud, 4 and 5 are 9 and 6 are 15 and 7 are 22, put down 
2 and carry 2 to the next. The monitor stands by the board with a 



1 Edinburgh Review, Vol. 17, pp. 74-75. 
Ibid. 



54 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

piece of chalk, and sets down the several products, as they are found 
by the boys who add the columns in their turn; and a new example is 
given when the first is well understood. When a boy in adding makes 
a mistake, the next boy or any boy in the class, who discovers it, 
should take precedency of him. This excites attention and laudable 
ambition." 1 "This account of the method of teaching addition will 
be sufficient in arithmetic; as the principle is applicable to all the 
other rules, and may with superior advantages, be adopted by every 
teacher." 2 Monitors were still employed in 1850 in teaching arith- 
metic, but under the supervision of the master. At this time the 
monitor was supposed to be able to explain the operations on the 
board. x 

At first glance nothing seems more inexplicable than the extrava- 
gant claims for the most wooden of all methods called educational. 
"We have seen a class of girls whose ages average not more than 
nine, by the force of memory and a few plain rules, multiply seven or 
R j. eight figures by an equal number, enumerate, and announce 
accurately the product amounting to quintillions and then 
extract the square root of this product and state the root and the 
remainder without varying a figure from the truth." 3 The impres- 
sion made upon a visitor to Lancaster's Borough Road School was 
that, "There is hardly anything in his school so calculated to produce 
an effect upon the spectator. The children seem to have caught the 
knowledge of arithmetic at once, without the usual process of learn- 
ing." 4 

The last sentence from Bernard suggests a clue to the superiority 
of the new method. Note the usual process of learning: "According 
to the notions that long and generally prevailed, it was deemed a 
sufficient foundation for knowledge in the sciences to teach children 
to repeat by rote the names and signs of numbers from one to one 
thousand or upward. They were then, though with some difficulty, 

taught to distinguish and to name the corres- 
in A "th t' ponding figures and to divide them into units, 

tens, thousands, etc. . . . The rules which 

1 Lancaster, British System of Education, Washington, 1812, p. 44. This 
was the method employed in the schools of the Free School Society and, 
according to the Manual of 1814, p. 57, "it has been found very expeditious." 

2 Account of Free School Society, 18 14, pp. 58-59. 

3 Griscom, Monitorial Instruction, p. 49. 

4 Bernard, New School, p. 96. 



Method of Teaching 55 

he was compelled to commit to memory successively at every step 
as he advanced, were composed in terms utterly beyond his compre- 
hension; and as they were never explained to him, he gained nothing 
by repeating them but an exercise of the memory. Ideas upon the 
subject might be accidentally acquired, and where a notion of the 
advantages to be derived from the knowledge of arithmetic had been 
early impressed upon the mind, they would be sought for and ob- 
tained. But when there was no such stimulus to exertion, all must 
have been performed mechanically, and as whatever is not clearly 
understood is soon forgotten, we need not be surprised, that of the 
numbers who have been thus taught the art of ciphering without 
any clear notion respecting the principles on which they worked, so 
few should have retained any of the little they at school acquired." 1 

"The vague and ill devised methods of teaching in general, are 
fraught with the most serious evils. . . . Our youth are made 
to languish over books of words, accompanied only by the midnight 
lamp, without explanation or oral instruction, and compelled to recite 
these words, not understood, verbatim, on entering school the next 
morning. This although a popular method, is one the most incon- 
sistent and absurd requisitions that was ever enforced on human 
beings." 2 "The pupil simply worried through his arithmetic, through 
rules and mechanical operations. There was no knowledge of the 
subject and no mental gain." 3 

It is not difficult to discover the superiority of Lancaster's method 
to the method in vogue at that time. Instead of the long prelimi- 
naries and the learning of numbers and rules the pupils were at once 
set to work in the operations of arithmetic. The children were given 
something to do, though they were left to the direction of the moni- 
tors who knew little more than themselves. The child had some 
opportunity of learning arithmetic. The inadequacy of the Lancas- 
terian plan was discovered when comparison was made with the more 
intelligent methods of Pestalozzi and Warren Colburn. 

Science and Object Teaching 

The earlier Lancasterian schools do not appear to have had any 
provision for these subjects, which were not easily adapted to moni- 

1 Academician, 1818, Vol. I, pp. 281-282, from Hamilton's Hints. 

2 Ibid., p. 244. 

3 Carter, Letters on the Free Schools of New England in American Journal 
of Education, 1827, Vol. II, p. 30. 



56 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

torial methods of instruction. However, in advance of 
iJr °° any formal plans for teaching natural science, collections 

of objects were formed. Lancaster's interest in the 
subject is indicated by the fact that within a year after he came to 
America he proposed the foundation of a National Museum at Wash- 
ington for extending scientific education, promoting agriculture, and 
aiding the arts and industries, thus anticipating the idea of the Smith- 
sonian Institution and the Department of Agriculture. Lancaster 
proposed a tax on sea-captains, merchants and travelers who neglected 
to bring in specimens. 1 In a measure following his suggestion, the 
African Free School in 1828 issued a circular inviting "captains of 
vessels and other gentlemen traveling in oub own or foreign countries 
to contribute to the school museum." 2 

Object teaching came in with the establishment of the Infant 
Schools in 1828. These schools followed the Pestalozzian rather than 
the Lancasterian model, and were taught by "females" 
s , , with some monitorial assistance. The daily program pro- 

vided for conversation about common objects; and reading 
was taught in association with objects and pictures, i A visitor thus 
describes the instruction in Infant School No. 1: "Underneath the 
picture may be placed the letters c, a, t; the child is soon taught to 
spell cat, and thus at once learns its letters, the name of its favorite 
animal, and how to spell it. Thus I observed in the infant school, 
in children of about eighteen months old, one that could scarcely 
stand alone, who, on a picture of a cat being placed on the stand, would, 
as the monitor pointed with his stick, spell c, a, t. The same with 
dog, cow, horse, etc. up to elephant, crocodile, rhinoceros, and other 
animals of which they had only seen the pictures. It soon becomes 
easy to make them acquainted with the natural history of these 
animals, and an infant learns the difference between the names of an 
elephant and a phaeton, and how to spell them much sooner than 
some persons who ride in one of their own. Thus children acquire 
ideas of things along with their names. They are sensible of this 
acquisition and are delighted with it. Happiness and satisfaction 
are depicted on their countenances, and intelligence -begins to mark 
their features. From objects near at hand, and within the range of 
sight, the transition is easy to objects remote, but still material. 



1 Letters on National Subjects, Washington, 1820. 

2 Andrews, History of the African Free School, New York, 1830. 



Method of Teaching 57 

Thus an idea of a mountain, an island, an isthmus, etc. is more quickly 
and perfectly comprehended by an infant on inspecting figures, or 
with a picture, than it can be by a youth at an academy, assisted by 
all the definitions which the school can furnish, without a picture or 
model. By means of models the infant acquires ideas of astronomy 
and of all the other objects of the material creation." 1 

Astronomy was the first science to be introduced into the upper 
schools. 2 It is reported by Andrews that two of his boys, aged 
fifteen and thirteen years, calculated "correctly (ac- Astronomy 
cording to the rules given for that purpose) the distance 
of each planet from the sun, its magnitude compared with that of 
the earth, and the degree of Light and Heat received at each planet." 3 
The character of the instruction, apart from the mathematical side, 
may be inferred from the examination of a ten-year-old boy in 1826. 

"Q. What is the earth? A. It is a planet, and the third, in the solar system. 

Q. What surrounds the earth? A. The atmosphere. 

Q. Of what does the earth consist? A. Of land and water. 

Q. What shape has the earth? A. It is round. 

Q. How do you know it is round? A. Because we can see the tops of ships 
masts first at sea. 

Q. Does the earth stand still or move? A. It moves on its axis, and has its' 
motion round the sun. 

Q. What takes place from these motions? A. Its motion round the sun pro- 
duces the change of seasons, and its motion on its axis, the succession 
of day and night. 

Q. If the earth turns round, why are we not turned heels up at midnight? 
A. Because the attraction of gravity draws all bodies towards the center 
of the earth. 

Q. Does any other planet obey the laws of gravitation? A. Yes, Sir, Mars, 
as well as the other smaller planets, called asteroids, Jupiter, etc. 

Q. Has the earth any satellite? A. Yes, the moon is the earth's satellite. 

Q. Has any other planet a satellite, or moon? A. Yes, Saturn has seven and 
Jupiter has four, and they all gravitate towards their respective prin- 
cipals. 

Q. Have we any antipodes? A. Yes, Sir, they are the people directly under 
us, they have their feet opposite to our feet." 4 

To relieve the monotony of the catechetical memoriter method of 
teaching astronomy, dramatization was introduced. "In astronomy, 



1 American Journal of Education, 1828, Vol. Ill, pp. 690-693. 

2 28th Annual Report, Public School Society, 1833. 

3 History of the African Free School, p. 97. 

4 Ibid., pp. 145-146. 



58 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

the pupils may sometimes personate the sun, 
Dramatization , ,1 , 1 t it • 

in Astronomy moon and earth, — so as to represent by their 

own positions and movements, many of its im- 
portant phenomena; and at the same time, give the derivation of the 
scientific terms, such as solstice, tropic, and equinoctial; — while the 
teacher will often, in the midst of these illustrations, repeat the requi- 
sition of 'Spell it'— 'Define it.'" 1 

Upon the suggestion of Mr. Josiah Holbrook, the trustees in 1844 
approved a plan of instruction in " sensible objects" and the forming 

of collections. Not less than ten thousand elemen- 
pj tary cabinets of geology were collected, assorted 

and labeled by the pupils. 2 ,-The collection for the 
Primary Schools included quartz, feldspar, mica, granite, hornblend, 
sienite, pudding-stone, burr-stone, sand-stone, a crystal of quartz, 
granular lime-stone, compact lime, statuary marble, gypsum, hydrau- 
lic lime, rhombic spar, serpentine, precious serpentine, soap-stone, 
talc, asbestos, lava, pumice-stone, coral, organic-remains, iron ore, 
anthracite coal and bituminous coal. 

In the Manual of 1850 the term "object lessons" is used with a 
remarkable extension in meaning, including the names of the letters, 
rules of grammar, the nature of the soul and the benevolence of the 
Creator. The author of this course must have been as devoid of 
humor and as innocent of the scientific spirit as Lancaster himself. 
"The first lessons should be on things with which they are most 
familiar; letters and words, the things they wear, eat and use. For, 

although they are familiar with their names and 

Object lessons, or uses, nevertheless they are quite ignorant of their 
Instruction in , , , , r™ • _ _i. 

Commo Th' es nature and character. Ihe acquirement, then, 

of such knowledge, will be a new and continual 

source of pleasure to them. Begin with letters, the signs of sounds: 

the human voice, the nature of speech, and construction of language 

by syllables, words and sentences. Make such lessons, as they are 

continued, a means of presenting the elementary stages of grammar: 

the names of all things as being nouns; the words that are added to 

them to express their kind and quality as being adjectives: requiring 

them to give an example of each; — all actions, as verbs, — those done 

to us as well as by us; pronouns, the little words taking the place of 



l 40th Annual Report, Public School Society, 1846, p. 28. 
1 Ibid., p. 18. 



Method of Teaching 59 

nouns to prevent repetition; prepositions as words expressing the 
relation of things, etc., etc. These if illustrated by actions, as 
speaking, walking, and singing, and by significant motions, would 
never be forgotten; for instance, by motion of their hands above 
their heads, below their chins, by their side, behind their backs; and to 
make the preposition emphatic, say — above, below, by, on, behind, 
show the relation of my hands and head, my hands and side, etc. 
They would thus be prepared to understand the rules of grammar 
which say, 'Prepositions express some relation of different things,' 
and so on of other rules. Next proceed to form and structure of the 
body — speak of the soul, of the external senses, of the moral sense, 
— the social duties; with evidence of the benevolence of the Creator 
as blended with everything connected with animated nature. Such 
ideas should pervade these lessons generally. Proceed with the 
manner in which natural life is sustained; then the products of the 
Earth, edible substances; roots, grain, fruit, etc., and artificial things. 
The Earth's structure, the starry Heavens. Hints of all these in 
their order, if the lessons are short and simple, would soon impress 
their minds with a great amount of useful knowledge. The diligent 
teacher of these things, will find a satisfaction in knowing that the 
time they (sic) have devoted to these short oral lessons, has been 
profitably bestowed. Beside the common division of various sub- 
stances into animal, vegetable, and mineral, they may be again 
divided into organic and inorganic. The first comprises those 
beings, which either have, or once had life, and the organs or instru- 
ments by which it is sustained, — such as the organs of breathing, for 
circulating blood or sap, and digesting food for the growth of every 
part. The second comprises those objects which never had life, or 
means of sustaining it. . . . The inorganic kingdom comprises 
minerals, metals, air and water. The first two are substances from 
the interior of the earth, though sometimes found on the surface; 
they are those dug from a pit in the earth, that is a mine, — hence 
called minerals. . . . All substances may also be classed as 
natural or artificial. The natural are creations or creatures of God, 
the creator. Artificial are such as made by the art of man, they are 
called manufactures, from manus, a hand and factum, to make. 
. . . Honey, wax, oil, etc. are natural substances. Paper, cloth, 
brick, etc. are manufactured or artificial substances. . . . Ani- 
mals may be divided into mammals, those nourishing their young with 
milk. This class includes, 1st all animals with four feet, or quadru- 



60 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

peds, . . . 2nd Quadrumana, or four handed as monkeys, etc., 
3d Cetacea, or whale kind, 4th Bi-manus or two handed, as man. 
The next class are birds or bipeds, animals with two feet. These 
feed on seeds, and some of them on insects and on flesh. Next 
Reptiles. ... Of this class are lizards, frogs, etc. Next 
fishes, or those which live in the water, having fins instead of hands 
or feet for motion. Then insects, or those divided into three parts, 
such as bugs, beetles, etc. Next vermes, or worms — which class are 
soft bodied animals destitute of limbs, some of them provided with 
shells, as polypus, etc. And lastly, Mollusca, as having no bones 
and being soft fleshed as oysters, clams, etc. This general classifica- 
tion of the animal kingdom, will excite a love of nature, so charac- 
teristic of the young, and which is desirable by all means to cultivate 
. . . will draw the mind from vain and trifling thoughts to those 
which are solid and useful." 1 

This lavish feast to satisfy infant hunger for knowledge was no 
doubt the natural result of the prevailing tendency to systematize 

educational procedure and to rely for a knowledge of 
Ch'ld Studv child nature upon the literature of the Infant School 

movement. The child was seen only from the adult 
point of view and through the medium of a distorted Pestalozzianism. 
The New York High School, opened in 1825, had an introductory 
class "to receive children of the earliest age, and to introduce them, 
by gentle steps and by allurements best suited to their infant tastes, 
to the portals of learning." Children were received "as soon as 
they can walk and pronounce with tolerable distinctness words which 
are repeated to them, and have sufficient vivacity to notice what is 
passing around them." 2 

This pseudo-Pestalozzianism invaded the sacred portals of the 
home and even there laid allurements for the youth of tenderest 

years. Little Edward Eustace, aged three, is brought 
J 1 a : n . in in the arms of his mother, who proceeds to illustrate 

her method: "Mrs. E. — 'Now Edward, run and fetch 
mamma your stool. Show me what you can do with it.' Edward — 'I 
can set it down, mamma, and lift it up.' Mrs. E. — 'So you can! Do 
something more with it.' He turns it, drags it, slides it, leans it, etc. 
Between, over, under, before, behind, etc., are taught in the same 



1 Manual of 1850, pp. 54-57. 

2 Griscom, Monitorial Instruction, p. 43. 



Method of Teaching 61 

way." 1 Here is the life story of a bright boy nourished on the Infant 
School plan. Porter Brinsmade, born February 28, 
1827, in Hartford, Connecticut. From the age of 4 Cultivated 
months, his eyes were directed to surrounding objects, 
until names of articles became familiar. At ten months he learned 
the alphabet from blocks. (He could not utter the sounds, but 
would pick out the letters called for.) He took no delight in toys, 
but in pictures and books. Geography was a favorite study before 
his second birthday. Then he became interested in geometry. His 
mother devoted herself to him. Love of knowledge was a passion. 
He was often told that to his Father in Heaven he was indebted for 
what he most loved; and with an affecting earnestness, and graceful 
gesture of his little hand he would say "Thank God." Porter died 
at the age of 2 years, 5 months. 2 

By a system of exchange with the schools of other cities, the school 
collection was enlarged, an interest in collecting developed, and 
opportunity afforded for practice in correspondence. Exchange of 
Some interesting letters are found in the Fortieth Specimens 

Report of the Public School Society, 1846. 

New York, July 24th, 1845. 
Dear Friends: 

We, the girls of Public School No. 15, send you three sets of minerals; 
each containing six specimens. On Monday the 21st, between three and four 
hundred families connected with our school, were supplied with similar sets, 
which were collected by the boys, and labelled by the scholars of the several 
departments. The Mica was sent to us by the children of the Orphan Asylum 
at Bloomingdale. We are going to send some specimens to several primary 
schools, and try to interest them also. We take great pleasure in sending them 
to you; and hope that you will be pleased with them. We would have en- 
closed some geometrical diagrams if we had had sufficient time to prepare them; 
but we hope to have another opportunity of sending them. 
Yours affectionately, 

Susan A. Black, for the girls of P. S. No. 15 
To the girls of Mr. Salisbury's School, Syracuse. 

Syracuse, August 20th, 1845. 
Dear Friends: 

We hail you as sisters. We are glad a correspondence is now open be- 
tween us, and we haste to acknowledge the reception of the box of minerals 
presented by you. In return we send you eighteen specimens of Plants 
gathered in the vicinity of our village. Our class in Botany numbers sixteen. 

1 American Journal of Education, 1829, Vol. IV, pp. 497-506. 

2 Ibid., 1838, Vol. V, pp. 199-206. 



62 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

We have analyzed fifty species of plants this term, and find ourselves in- 
creasingly interested in the pursuit of so pleasing and profitable study. We 
are exceedingly pleased with the minerals, and will gratefully receive any 
specimens of mapping, penciling, painting or geometrical diagrams with 
which you may favor us. While we thank you, we will endeavor in our re- 
sponse to return an ample equivalent. We love the study of Natural Science, 
— and are taught by our Teacher to regard the field of nature as our Heavenly 
Father's own library, from which, he would not only have us gather lessons of 
wisdom and instruction, but in which every object should seem to us to mirror 
forth his perfections, and enforce his claim upon the affections of our young 
hearts. 

Hoping to hear from you again, we remain, 

Yours affectionately, 
Eliza Fritcher, on behalf of Girls' Public School No. 7, Syracuse. 1 

During the early days of our public school system, as we have 
seen, every method or device employed seemed to give rise to the 
most extravagant expectations. The ex- 
Exchange of Specimens change f specimens and letters was no ex- 
and Letters a Means of . ,,,. , T i ., roo 

Averting Civil War ception to this rule. In a letter of S. S. 

Randall, at one time deputy state superin- 
tendent of common schools for the State of New York, is an interesting 
anticipation of the school children of New York, by these letters and 
specimens, averting the civil war which was then imminent. "I 
should do equal injustice to my own feelings, and to the warm hearts 
and generous spirits of the children of Virginia, if I failed to express 
to you, my dear young friends, some of the reflections which this 
novel and interesting embassy from the children of the North to the 
South, has excited. In my judgment, it is destined, under the blessing 
of Divine Providence, to exert a stronger, more beneficial, and enduring 
influence upon the integrity and perpetuity of our glorious Union, 

than any, and perhaps than all other agencies combined 

And while the minds of good men in every section are seriously 
alarmed, lest in an evil and inconsiderate hour, some rash hand may 
be put forth to sunder the bonds of brotherhood, which have joined us 
together as one people, and are to us our only safeguard and highest 
treasure — the spectacle of forty thousand children from the Empire 
State in the North, extending the hand of fraternal amity and kind 
regards to their brethren and sisters of the 'Old Dominion' in the 
South, affords a sure guaranty for the indivisibility and perpetuity 
of the Union." 2 



1 40th Annual Report, Public School Society, 1846, pp. 30-31. 

2 43d Annual Report, Public School Society, 1849, p. 32. 



Method of Teaching 63 

Manual Training 

Although Lancaster was interested in some forms of manual train- 
ing, especially in the making of straw hats and in sewing for girls, 1 
no real plan of manual training except sewing for 
girls was developed in connection with the monitorial Tr i ' <* 

system, and no facilities were provided in the schools. 
In some of the schools an attempt was made "to encourage the 
scholars in the productions of their little works of art, 
and to excite some degree of competition." School E ° r , 

fairs were held, at which were exhibited articles that 
the pupils made at home. "Much pleasure is afforded by the exhi- 
bitions of such first beginnings; among the articles produced by the 
boys, will be found wagons, carts of various descriptions, wheelbar- 
rows, tables, chairs, benches, sleighs, candle stands, bedsteads, 
cradles, fire engines, hooks and ladders used at fires, with carriage 
for the same, ships, brigs, sloops, boats, houses, anchors, hammers, 
crowbars made of lead, specimens of carved wood, and in one instance 
a complete set of carpenter's tools, neatly fitted into a chest five 
inches long." 2 

School Libraries 

Only one month after the laying of the cornerstone for the new 
Henry Street building of School Number 2, in November, 1810, 
the sum of one hundred dollars was appropriated for the purchase of 
books for a circulating library attached to the school, and additions 
were requested from members of the Society. 3 This 
act was typical. It became the policy of the trustees ji'sHf 8 T 

to equip the schools with libraries. In 1818 it was de- 
cided to place books to the value of fifty dollars in each of the four 
schools then in operation, the use of the library to be limited to the 
best scholars, who should form a "Class of Merit." 4 Until about 
1847 books were loaned only as a reward for good conduct and pro- 
ficiency. Library opportunities were then extended to all, "as a 
happy means of reforming the vicious, careless and 

indolent." 5 To what extent these classes availed T a ° 

Influence 
themselves of their new opportunities it is not possible 

to say. 

1 Lancaster, Improvements in Education, 1807. 

2 Andrews, New York African Free School, 1830, pp. 109-110. 

3 Account of Free School Society, 1814, p. 15. 

4 Report of Committee on State of New York Free Schools, 18 18, p. 8. 
° 41st Annual Report, Public School Society, 1847. 



64 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

In March, 1846, the number of readers was 4284, and the circula- 

lation 67,108. There were about 260 volumes in each building, a 

total of 5220 volumes. The Forty-first Annual 

™8 4 r 6 n ' s Reading Re P° rt of the Public Sch ° o1 Societ y> m7 > 

contains an appendix on libraries. The cata- 
logue of books is especially interesting to the student of children's 
literature, particularly as the comparative popularity of each book is 
indicated by the number of times it was drawn. Miss Sedgwick 
heads the list with 1247 readers for "Poor Rich Man and Rich Poor 
Man." Dana's "Two Years before the Mast" found 920 readers. 
The " Elephant in a Wild State " was not neglected by 698 adventurous 
pupils. "Sanford and Merton" was not then outgrown by Ameri- 
can youth. Goldsmith's were the popular histories. Few school 
boys of to-day know the story of "Pitcairn's Island" then read by 
526. Natural philosophy seemed to appeal to youths of more tender 
years than at the present day. A touching anecdote is related by 
Charles E. Andrews, teacher of the African Free School. "A little fel- 
low, 10 years of age, belonging to the school, was asked among other 
things, by Doctor Samuel L. Mitchill of this city, whether any other 
planet beside the earth had a satellite or moon. He answered, 'Yes 
Sir, Saturn has seven, and Jupiter has four, and they all gravitate 
towards their respective principals.' He then asked how he came to 
know so much about these subjects. Answer: 'From reading books, 
sir, in the school library.'" 1 



1 Andrews, History of the African Free School, p. 104. 



VI 

RELIGIOUS AND MORAL EDUCATION 

The non-sectarian character of the Lancasterian movement which 
aroused in England the bitter opposition of zealous partisans such as 
Mrs. Trimmer and the other supporters of Dr. Bell, served at first 
to strengthen the Free School movement in New York and later to 
facilitate the final merging into the Public School Non _ 

System. The act of incorporation of the Free School sectarian 
Society (1805) states that the society is instituted Schools 

"for the establishment of a Free School for the education of the poor 
children who do not belong to, or are not provided for, by any religious 
society." The object, as stated, was to implant in the minds of such 
children the principles of religion and morality. 

Religious education was duly provided for in the Rules for the 

Government of the Schools: 1 (1) The reading of the Scriptures was 

required morning and evening. (Rule VI) (2) All 

scholars were directed to attend school on the first c ea - *" g ° 

bcnptures 

day of the week, "That they there be divided into 
classes, and proceed under charge of monitors, to such places of 
public worship as may be designated by the parents or guardians." 
(Rule VII). This is evidently Lancaster's solution of 
the problem of religious instruction: "On being ad- Attendance 
mitted into school, the children of churchmen should be 
registered as such and the children of dissenters as such. That on 
Sundays they should assemble at the school in the morning and after- 
noon, previous to the hour for Divine Service, and the children of 
each denomination be conducted from thence to their respective 
places for worship." 2 

The requirement of Sunday attendance and the marshaling of 
children to church apparently proved too great a burden to the school, 
for by 1819 the rules were modified; "It is expected that parents see 



1 Account of Free School Society, 1814. 

1 Lancaster, Instructions for Forming a Society for the Poor, p. vi. 

65 



66 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

that their children regularly attend some place of worship." 1 Efforts 
were made to hold parents to their duty. Reports of church or 
Sunday School attendance were made to the trustees. In 1828 the 
school visitor found that 1500 out of 1700 families sent their children 
to Sunday School. 2 The school buildings were used for Sunday 
Schools. 

(3) Opportunity for denominational instruction was not limited 
to Sundays. Tuesday afternoons were devoted to instruction at 
Catechism school in the principles of the Christian religion. The 

several churches were invited to send suitable persons 
to catechise and instruct. (Rule X) 3 "An association of more than 
fifty ladies of the first position and character, and belonging to the 

different religious denominations in the city, volun- 
f Lad'e teered their services, and they accordingly met at the 

schools to examine the children in their respective 
catechisms." 4 A suggestion as to the activity of this committee is 
found in the minutes of Public School Number 1; "On February 2nd, 
1813, a committee of twenty-four ladies, of the Presbyterian, Episco- 
pal, Methodist, Associate Reformed, and Reformed Dutch Churches, 
attended to catechise the children. On the 9th, thirty, and on the 
16th, forty ladies attended to give religious instruction. Bishop 
Hobart opened the exercises with prayer. One afternoon in the week 
was devoted to these religious services." 5 

In 1814, "the number of children educated in the peculiar tenets 
of each religious community" was: 

"Presbyterians 271 Baptists 119 

Episcopalians 186 Dutch Church 41 

Methodists 172 Roman Catholic 9" 6 

In a memorial presented to the Legislature in the session of 1823 
the trustees (pages 20-21) claimed that they were not neglectful in 
educating the children in the leading principles of the Christian faith. 
Four measures are mentioned: 



1 Address to Parents, New York Free School Society, 1819. 

2 Seton, S. W., Report of School Visitor, 1829. 

3 Account of Free School Society, 18 14. 

4 Bourne, Public School Society, p. 27. 
6 Ibid., p. 681. 

6 Ninth Annual Report, Free School Society, 1814. 



Religious and Moral Education 67 

1. Reading of the scriptures. 

2. Enforcing of church attendance. 

3. The trustees address the children upon their moral and religious 
duties. 

4. The adoption of a non-sectarian catechism. 

The Deputy Superintendent of Common Schools, William L. 
Stone, in his report to the Board of Education of the City and County 
of New York, 1843 (pages 9-10), was able to state concerning the 
common school law prohibiting sectarian doctrine, that "the fell 
spirit of sectarianism has never entered into the schools of the Public 
School Society. Catechisms and sectarian books are rigidly excluded." 
Sectarian instruction received a different interpretation by the Com- 
missioners of School Monies in the Ninth Ward, who in this same year, 
1843, caused the Board of Education to direct the omission of several 
selections from "Popular Lessons": 

Son of God 

"The son of God who came from heaven 
The erring world to save, 
Who says, 'repent and be forgiven, 
And live beyond the grave!' 

By actions holy and serene 

He won his father's love; 
And though superior far to men 

Was harmless as a dove. 

He raised the dying from the bed; 

He made the blind to see; 
He made the tombs give up their dead, 

And set the prisoner free!" 1 

Religious Reading — Punishment of Sin 

"If I do wrong, my troubled heart 
Shall vainly seek the bed of rest; 
Peace will from my pillow fly, 
Sleep will shun my weary eye, 
Angry foes will then proclaim, 
All my folly and shame; 
And my friends who once my love partook 
Pass me with a stranger's look. 



1 New York Education Document No. 2, p. n. 



68 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

Fast my burning tears will flow, 

Wearily my days will go; 

And with cold and shuddering gloom 

I shall see the opening tomb. 

Parents will with bitter pain 

See their labor spent in vain; 

Will mourn the child they cannot save, 

And seek shelter in the grave. 

When the aim of death destroys 

All my false and fatal joys, 

In that hour of deep despair 

God will not regard my prayer. 

I shall see the blest afar, 

Radiant as the morning star, * 

While with aching steps I go 

To the darker realms of woe." 1 

An illustration of the religious exercises is given in the Manual 
of 1830. After the salutation of the teacher to the 
Exercises school, and expression of their dependence upon God 

for sparing them to meet again, the exercise pro- 
ceeds: 

" Teacher. How shall we feel to our heavenly Father for these mercies? Ans. 

Truly thankful. 
Teacher. What example have we for this in the Holy Scriptures? Ans. 

Psalm c. 4, 5:' — Be thankful unto Him, and Bless His name, for the Lord is 

good. His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endureth to all generations.' 
Teacher. Children, who is good? Ans. The Lord is good. 
Teacher. To whom should we be thankful? Ans. Be thankful unto him. 
Teacher. Whose name should we bless? Ans. Bless His name. 
Teacher. What is said in this Psalm, of God's mercy? Ans. His mercy is 

everlasting. 
Teacher. What is said of God's truth? Ans. His truth endureth to all 

generations. 
Teacher. What is God's truth? Ans. His Holy Laws. 
Teacher. Psalm XXXIV. 11: 'Come, ye children, hearken unto me; I 

will teach you the fear of the Lord.' My dear children, tell me, who has 

watched over you, and preserved your lives through the past night? Ans. 

Psalm III. 5: 'I laid me down, and slept. I waked for the Lord sustained 

me.' 
Teacher. Does God always see you? Ans. Proverbs XV. 3: 'The eyes of 

the Lord are in every place.' 
Teacher. Does God know your very thoughts? Ans. Psalm CXXXIX. 

I, 20: 'Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted 

with all my ways.' 



1 New York Education Document No. 2. 



Religious and Moral Education 69 

Teacher. Does God hear all you say? Ans. Psalm CXXXIX. 4: 'For 
there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, thou knowest it alto- 
gether.' 

Teacher. Does God require the young to serve him? Ans. Ecclesiastes 
XII. 1: 'Remember thy creator in the days of thy youth.'" 

The plan of instruction for 1842 says that the following rules are 
recited daily, after the reading of the scriptures. According to the 
Manual of 1850 the repetition is occasional only. After this exercise 
the scholars are personally inspected as to cleanliness, before repairing 
to their seats. 

" 1 st — I must be silent when the bell rings. 

2nd — I must always mind my teachers. 

3rd — I must come every day, and be here when school goes in. 

4th — I must not be idle. 

5th — I must not lie. 

6th — I must not steal. 

7th — I must not swear. 

8th — I must not be angry. 

9th — I must not strike or hurt any one in anger. 
10th — I must be pleasant and kind to all. 
nth — I must forgive all who offend or injure me. 
1 2th — I must be clean in my clothes, my face, and my hands. 
13th — I must be decent in all my ways. 
14th — I must not destroy my books or lessons. 
15th — I must not tear nor break any of the furniture of the school. 
1 6th — I must remember these rules and try to keep every one of them." 

In the Primary department, the following is added: 

Persuasive Charge 

" Teacher. My dear children, the intention of this school is to teach you to be 

good and useful while in this world, — that you may be happy 1 here and in 

the world to come. 
Teacher. What is the intention of this school? We therefore first teach you 

to 'remember your Creator in the days of your youth.' What do we first 

teach you? 
Teacher. It is our duty to teach you this, because we find it is written in the 

Holy Bible. Why is it our duty to teach you this? 
Teacher. The Bible directs us to 'train you up in the way you should go.' 

What good book directs us to train you up in the way you should go? 
Teacher. Therefore my children — You must obey your parents. 



1 Happiness in this world is suggested in the Manual of 1850, not in the 
Manual of 1842. 



70 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

School. I must obey my parents. 

Teacher. You must obey your teachers. 

School. I must obey my teachers. 

Teacher. You must never tell a He. 

School. I must never tell a lie. 

Teacher. You must never steal the smallest thing. 

School. I must never steal the smallest thing. 

Teacher. You must never swear. 

School. I must never swear. 

Teacher. 'God will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.' 

School. 'God will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.' 

Teacher. God always sees you. (Slowly, and in a soft tone.) 

School. God always sees me. 

Teacher. God hears all you say. 

School. God hears all I say. 

Teacher. God knows all you do. 

School. God knows all I do. 

Teacher. You should fear to offend him, for he is most holy. 

School. I should fear to offend him, for he is most holy. 

Teacher. You should depart from evil, and learn to do well. 

School. I should depart from evil, and learn to do well. 

Teacher. May all you, dear children, while attending this school, learn to be 

good and useful in this world. 
School. May we all while attending this school, learn to be good and useful 

in this world. 
Teacher. And with God's blessing, may you be happy in this world and in 

that which is to come. 
School. And with God's blessing, may we be happy in this world and that 

which is to come." 1 

The children then sing a hymn by Dr. Watts, as follows: 

"Let children that would fear the Lord 

Hear what their teachers say, 
With reverence meet their parents' word, 

And with delight obey. 

Have we not heard what dreadful plagues 

Are threatened by our Lord 
To him who breaks his father's laws, 

And mocks his mother's word? 



1 The Manual of 1850 says: "The pupils, at each repetition place the right 
hand, opened, upon the breast, which gesture seems to make the sentiment 
more impressive." 



Religious and Moral Education 71 

But those who worship God, and give 

Their parents honor due, 
Here on this earth they long shall live, 

And live hereafter too." 1 

Moral Training 

The moral aim of the Free School Society was pronounced. Accord- 
ing to the act of incorporation, the purpose in its foundation was the 
implanting of the principles of religion and morality and the develop- 
ing of habits of industry and virtue. The means to this end were 
religious instruction, the daily reading of the "Rules" and "Per- 
suasive Charge," direct instruction in morals and man- 
ners, the library, circulars to parents, the school visitor, E ^"d 
above all the monitorial organization of the schools and 
the system of rewards and punishments. That the ultimate aim 
was not lost sight of is evident by the references to social and moral 
improvement in various reports of the society. These reports further 
indicate some measure of success. How much it is necessary to 
discount these reports it is not possible to say, as we cannot estimate 
the amount of elimination of undesirable pupils. In a memorial 
presented in 1823 the trustees of the Free School Society report that 
of the fourteen thousand children who had been on their register, 
but one had been pointed out as having been arraigned in a criminal 
court, while without the provisions of these schools such children 
had been growing up in idleness and pernicious associations, and were 
on the way to "the Alms House, The Hospital, The Bridewell, The 
Penitentiary and the State Prison." The principal of the African 
Free School reports in 1830, that of the several thousand colored 
children educated in that school, only three had been convicted in 
the criminal courts. 

In addition to the regular religious instruction, the recitations of 
the Rules and Persuasive Charge, and the addresses of the trustees, 
there was available a course of reading lessons prepared by the British 
and Foreign Society, including the following titles: "Of God Al- 
mighty"; "Of our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ"; 
" Of the Word of God" ; " Of the Light, Spirit and Grace of R eadin § 

.Lessons 

God"; "Of Worship and Religion"; "Of Parents"; "Of 
Children"; "Of Master and Servants"; "Of Husbands "and Wives"; 



1 Bourne, History of the Public School Society, p. 644. 



72 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

"Of Elders," etc., etc. 1 Much assistance in occasional lessons on 
manners was derived from a text-book published in New York, "The 
School of Good Manners," 2 School exhibitions were the occasions 
for didactic efforts on the part of pupils. 

A Moral Dialogue 

"(William) Good morning, James, where are you going so early? 

(James) I am going to school, William. 

(William) To school! Why, do you go so soon as this? I am not going yet 
this long while. 

(James) That may be your pleasure, William; this is mine. 

(William) Not altogether my pleasure either, James; for I have been teasing 
my mother for my breakfast for some time, and she says, 'No hurry, child, 
no hurry'; and sends me to play a little longer. 

(James) Well, I love to be obedient to my parents, and know it to be my duty; 
but I really think, that if I could not get my breakfast in time for early 
school, I should run off without it; for, half an hour's study over my sum 
or any other part of my exercises at school, is of more consequence to me 
than even my breakfast. 

(William) I have tried that, James, but I find that if I adopt such a plan, 
I may go without, not only my breakfast, but my dinner also; for, although 
my parents are, perhaps, as kind and indulgent as any parents can be, in 
other respects; yet, in this, they seem to take but little concern. I have often 
thought it a great pity, that they have not to pay three or four dollars a 
quarter for my schooling, as our neighbor George's parents have to pay for 
his; I think, then, they would reckon every half hour that I were absent 
from school, a loss of money at least. They don't think of what Doctor 
Franklin says, that, 'Time is money,' nor do they consider that time spent 
at school is to me more precious than money. 

(James) Why, William, you both please and distress me. I am pleased to 
find, that the late hours at which you are noted for going to school, is not 
your fault, and am, at the same time, greatly distressed to hear that your 
parents, being so much older, and who ought to — 

(William) Stop, James! I can't hear a word against my dear parents, I 
can excuse them, because they have but little learning themselves, and 
don't know the value of it; nor do they know how much time it takes to 
make one a good scholar. 

(James) But, pray William, does it not subject you to great trouble at school; 
when you attend late, what does the master say? 

(William) Why he says a great deal, and I often wish my parents could hear 
what he says, I think they would be more particular about the passing 
hours of the day. He says, among other things, that he knows of several 
boys, that are now great truants who used to be good boys, but, owing to 
the want of care in their parents, have become very troublesome by absence 
from school. 



1 1 6th Annual Report, Free School Society. 

2 Andrews, History of African Free School, p. 112. 



Religious and Moral Education 73 

(James) I can't see how that can be; surely, their parents don't wish them to 
do so; they must be very much grieved, I should think, to see their children 
do what is so much to their own disadvantage, and be so troublesome to 
their teacher. 

(William) That may be too, James, and yet, their parents may be frequently 
the real cause of their bad conduct, though insensible of it at the time. 

(James) How so, William? Do be more particular. 

(William) Well, I will. You must know, our school is governed by such 
regulations as must be strictly observed by all concerned, which not only 
ensure good order throughout the school, but which are calculated to 
bring us on, in our learning, with greater speed. Whenever a scholar dis- 
tinguishes himself by orderly conduct, or by excelling in the performance 
of his exercises, he is noticed by the master, by Tickets of Reward; but, if 
any of us misbehave, or come late to school, we are fined and have to pay 
back our tickets. If we have none to pay with, we are necessarily punished. 
Now it is required that when a scholar has been detained till a late hour 
at home, or for a day or two, that he bring a note, or some of the family 
call and explain to the teacher, so that no fault may be laid to the charge 
of the supposed delinquent, all this, however, is neglected by many of our 
parents, and we are sent off without anything to excuse us, and we, being 
sometimes disbelieved by the master, are accordingly punished, and there- 
by discouraged. 

(James) What you have said, William, I think of so much importance, that 
I shall endeavor to remember it, and profit by the information you have 
given me, and am glad to find you capable of entering so thoroughly into 
such an interesting subject." 1 

As one means of securing the cooperation of the parents in the moral 
training of children, an address to parents was issued in 1819. This 
circular refers to the force of example, the importance 
of steady attendance, the need of industry and frugality, Parents 

the improper use of spiritous liquors, necessity for 
cleanliness, observance of public worship on Sunday, religious instruc- 
tion by parents, the reading of the Bible, the principles of Christianity, 
observance of the rules of the school, including church attendance. 

Not satisfied with this impersonal method of reaching the home, 
the society enjoined upon the trustees the duty of visiting the par- 
ents in order to impress the duty of school and church 
attendance and to overcome the indifference of the par- Parents 

ents to the welfare of their children. In 1827, the society 
appointed a school visitor, who gave his entire time to this work. 
"The trustees also called into requisition the aid of the visitors of 



1 Andrews, History of the African Free Schools, 1830, pp. 136-138. 



74 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

the American Tract Society, whose regular monthly visits, in the 
distribution of tracts, were calculated to exert a valuable influence." 1 

Moral Training Through Monitorial Government 

All other means of moral training were, in the Lancasterian schools, 
subordinate to the moral influence of the monitorial system. The 
plan seemed perfectly adapted to cultivate those habits which were 
most desirable in the recipients of charity — order, industry and 
obedience; and as the scope of the schools was enlarged, it was put 
forward as meeting the moral needs of all classes. " How well adapted 
is such a system to all the purposes of Common Schools, in a common- 
wealth! The economy of its expenditures gives facility to the exten- 
sion of education, so vitally important in a Republican form of govern- 
ment. How suitable for the children of the people, is the training 
of the physical powers, conferring a heathful vigor to the body, 
while through the admirable feature of mutual instruction, from con- 
stant requisition on their mental resources, there is an energetic 
development of mind, which is characterized by a proper independence 
of thought and action, all the while guarded from any evil tendency, 
by the necessary vigilance and constant checks imposed by the moni- 
torial management of the school, and continual attention to a strict 
drill conducive to habits of industry, order, and submission to the 
laws, so that the teacher's representative is not only cheerfully 
obeyed, but respected. These salutary influences, together with 
method and neatness in all the arrangements, not only give efficiency 
to instruction on this system, but by cultivating self-respect and 
habits of obedience, give peculiar moral advantages that meet the 
wants of Common Schools that are to educate those who are to sus- 
tain in turn our free institutions." 2 "But these benefits are slight, 

ou ,. compared with its moral influence. In the old system, 

Obedience ...... 

the relation in which he stood toward the master, neces- 
sarily exacted from him habits of submission, having for its ob- 
ject the will (often very arbitrary) of an individual, and fear gener- 
ally for its motive, was of too servile a nature to exalt or develop 
the moral being. The submission under the Mutual Instruction 
System, is paid cheerfully, though to a child, often inferior in position 
and age; and is the expression of the purest and noblest feelings of 



1 Bourne, Public School Society, p. 622. 

2 42c! Annual Report, Public School Society, 1848, p. 42. 



Religious and Moral Education 75 

our nature, love of order, respect for law, and a deep conviction of 
the power and rights of intellectual superiority. There are few, 
however humble, who have not, under their direction, at one period 
or other of life, one or more individuals, and thus are called upon to 
give proofs of good feeling, patience, just and discreet exercise of 
authority; under the old systems the child always called on to obey 
had no opportunity of practising these virtues. The system of 
Mutual Instruction, on the contrary, by alternately placing him in 
the position of teacher and of taught, of superiority and inferiority, 
naturally enforces the exercise of the qualities demanded by each, 
on one side the duties of humility and obedience, and on the other, 
the mildness, and impartiality, which ought always to be inseparable 
from the exercise of power." 1 

Sydney Smith was astonished and delighted to find Lancaster's 
school a "perfect machine," made pleasant and interesting by "an 
air of military arrangement." 2 An observer of the well- Order 

drilled infant department in School No. 1 was moved to 
tears, and his "heart beat as though it would burst from its narrow 
tenement." 3 When boys are occupied they can do no wrong, — "The 
grand moral advantage of this system is that it places and keeps boys 
in a condition in which there is little opportunity of doing 
wrong. Their attention is constantly fixed; they are 
never idle; they never deviate from a regular course, whence the habit 
is formed of doing every thing in its proper time and place." 4 

A very different estimate of the value of the monitorial machinery 
was made by educators who were able to see below the surface. "In 
order to avoid expense, the National and Lancasterian Schools are 
taught by the boys themselves, the master being rather a governor 
than a teacher. This part of the system is admirably adapted to 
answer its purpose; but it has essential defects which 
render it unfit for general adoption. As the process of Mechanical 
instruction is carried forward by boys, it becomes nec- 
essary to mark out the duties of the teacher with as much minuteness 
as those of the learner. Indeed, the duties of each must be made per- 
fectly mechanical. There must be no doubt or hesitation on the part 
of the master or pupil, for doubt would produce delay and dispute, 

1 Account of Free School Society, Wyse on Education Reforfn pp. 45-46. 

2 Edinburgh Review, 1807, p. 82. 

3 American Journal Education, 1828, Vol. Ill, p. 690. 

4 Quoted in Griscom's Monitorial Instruction, p. 145. 



76 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

and consequently throw the whole machine into disorder. Hence 
there can be no appeal to the reasoning powers; for reasoning can nev- 
er be reduced to a mechanism. From the necessity which exists that 
all the boys should move exactly together, individual order is as much 
to be discouraged as individual inertness. Every boy must conform 
to the average motion of the school. In short, the system has all the 
excellencies and all the defects of military discipline. It produces 
habits of attention, order, and subordination — most valuable quali- 
ties to the class of society whose interests it has in view." 1 "Some 
well meaning persons, but men who did not look below the surface of 
things, and were utter strangers to the subject of public instruction, 
having by chance visited some of those semi-barbarous manufactur- 
ing towns of England, where for want of anything better, they are too 
happy to have Lancasterian schools, mistook for a masterpiece of per- 
fection, that which is only the infancy of the art of teaching and were 
even dazzled with the exhibition of vast numbers of children taught 
by one master, assisted by little monitors chosen from among the pu- 
pils themselves. Seeing children thus governed by children, they 
found a species of self-government, which they thought would be a 
useful preparation for the infusion of the democratic principle. . . 
. Other persons were pleased with the system on account of its 
cheapness, and then the eye was caught by the mechanical order 
and precision in the school exercises. The children went through 
their evolutions, according to a signal given by a child, as the differ- 
ent parts of machinery in a factory are set in motion by a crank." 2 

The moral influence of the monitorial plan in the New York schools 
was summed up by the County Superintendent of New York County, 

William A. Walker, who refers to it "as a system 
f M IT'"' °^ education; regarding its influences upon the 

mind and upon the heart both of the teacher, 
the pupil, and the community; its adaptation to the present state of 
the public mind and our social conditions; and even its relation to an 
enlightened economy, I am constrained to believe that it is radically 
and deplorably erroneous." 3 



1 Hill, Plan of Government for Boys, London, 1822 (reprint 1894), pp. 204- 
205. 

2 Victor Cousin, On the State of Education in Holland, London, 1838, 

P. 33- 

3 Report of County Superintendent of Common Schools, New York, 1846. 



Religious and Moral Education 77 

Punishments and Rewards 

In devising various forms of punishment, Lancaster showed mar- 
velous ingenuity. Judged solely by the list of tortures, he would ap- 
pear to take delight in the exercise of a fiendish malev- 
olence toward youth. But Lancaster was most kind- 
hearted, and even his use of outlandish forms of punishment was due 
to his efforts to find substitutes for flogging towards which he had the 
greatest aversion. To what extent Lancaster's devices for punishment 
were employed in the New York schools it is not possible to say, since 
teachers and school trustees seldom manifest Lancaster's frankness 
in this direction. A hint, however, as to the type of punishment 
used is found in Hosack's "Life of DeWitt Clinton": "As no corporal 
punishment was permitted, it was found necessary to make an example 
of children by using a small apartment with barred windows, and 
styled the Bridewell, which answered the purpose. After one punish- 
ment the thought of it proved sufficient." 1 The tendency to sub- 
stitute other inducements for the rod was certainly adopted by the 
Free School Society, and formed a contrast to the usual practice at 
that time. 2 Some quotations from the "Epitome," will indicate 
the "Instruments and Modes of Punishment," advocated by Lan- 
caster. 

"On a repeated or frequent offence, after admonition has failed, the 
lad to whom the offender presents a card, places a wooden log round 
his neck, which serves as a pillory, and with this he is 
sent to his seat. This log may weigh from four to six .. r 

pounds, some more and some less. The neck is not 
pinched or closely confined; . . . it is chiefly burthen-some by the 
manner in which it encumbers the neck, when the delinquent turns to 
the right or left. While it rests on his shoulders, the equilibrium is 
preserved; but on the least motion one way or the other, it is lost, and 
the log operates as a dead weight. Thus he is confined to sit in his 
proper position, and go on with his work. 

"When logs are unavailing, it is common to fasten the legs of the 
offender together with wooden schackles; one or more, according 
to the offence. The schackle is a piece of wood mostly 
a foot long, sometimes six or eight inches, and tied to c h k i 
each leg. When shackled, he cannot walk but in a very . 

1 Hosack's Life of DeWitt Clinton, p. 174. 

2 Lancaster, Epitome., p. 76. 



78 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

slow measured pace; being obliged to take six steps when confined 
for two when at liberty. Thus accoutred, he is ordered to walk 
around the school room, till tired out . . . he is glad to sue 
for liberty, and promise his endeavor to behave more steadily in 
future; with this he is sent to his seat, and goes on with his work. 
Should not this punishment have the desired effect, the left hand is 
tied behind the back, or wooden schackles fastened from elbow to 
elbow, behind the back. Sometimes the legs are tied together. 
This is an excellent punishment for boys who offend by leaving their 
seats, and wander about the school room. 

"Occasionally, boys are put in a sack, or in a basket, suspended to 
the roof of the school, in sight of all the pupils, who frequently smile 

at the bird in the cage. This punishment is one of 
Basket ^ e most terrible that can be inflicted on boys of 

sense and abilities. Above all, it is dreaded by the 
monitors; the name of it is sufficient, and therefore, it is but seldom 
resorted to on their account. 

"Frequently old offenders are yoked together, sometimes by a 
piece of wood that fastens around their necks; and thus confined, 

they parade the school, walking backwards . . . be- 
Caravan * n & obliged to pay very great attention to their foot- 

steps, for fear of running against any object that 
might cause the yoke to hurt their necks, or to keep from falling down. 
Four or six can be yoked together in this way. 

"Proclamation of the faults of an offender before the school. When 
a boy is disobedient to his parents, profane in his language, has corn- 
Labels mitted any offence against morality, or is remarkable 

for slovenliness, it is usual for him to be dressed up 
with labels, describing his offence, and a tin or paper cap on his head. 
In that manner he walks around the school, two boys preceding him, 
and proclaiming his fault; varying the proclamation according to the 
different offences. 

"When a boy comes to school with dirty face and hands, and it 
seems to be more the effect of habit than accident, a girl is appointed 

to wash his face in the sight of the whole school. 
Dirtv Face ^is g enera ^y creates much diversion, especially 

when (as previously directed) she gives his cheek 
a few gentle taps of correction with her hand. One punishment of 
this kind has kept the boys' faces clean for two years. 

"Few punishments are so effectual as confinement after school 
hours. It is, however, attended with one unpleasant circumstance. 



Religious and Moral Education 79 

In order to confine the boys in the school- 

,, ill ., . ,, ,j. , Confinement after 

rooms, after school hours, it is often needful School Hours 

that the master, or some proper substitute for 
him, should confine himself in school, to keep them in order. This 
inconvenience may be avoided by tying them to the desks, or putting 
them in logs, etc. in such a manner that they cannot loose themselves. 
These variations in the modes of unavoidable punishment, give it the 
continual force of novelty, whatever shape it may assume. Any 
single kind of punishment, continued constantly in use, becomes 
familiar, and loses its effect. Nothing but variety can continue the 
power of novelty. Happily in my institution, there are few occasions 
for punishment; and this conduces much to the pleasure it affords 
me. The advantage of various modes of correction is that they can 
be inflicted, so as to give much uneasiness to the delinquents, without 
disturbing the mind or temper of the master. 

"The object of these different modes of procedure is to weary the 
culprit with the log; or by placing him in confinement of one kind or 
another, till he is humbled, and likely to remove the cause of complaint 
by better behavior in the future. When he finds how easily his 
punishments are repeated, . . . that he, himself is made the 
instrument, . . . and no respite or comfort for him, but by 
behaving well, it is more than probable that he will change for the 
better. It is also very seldom that a boy deserves both a log and a 
shackle at the same time. Most boys are wise enough, when under 
one punishment, not to transgress again immediately, lest it should 
be doubled. They are mostly so prudent as to behave quite well, 
in hopes of being set at liberty from the one they already suffer, 
which is mostly in a few minutes. It ought to be understood in 
school, that whatever mode of punishment a master may adopt, on a 
repetition of the fault, a repetition of the punishment will unavoid- 
ably ensue; this will prevent recurring too often to modes of punish- 
ment which are not effectual without interrupting the pupil's attention 
to business, as the log, the shackle, the badge of disgrace; . . . 
at the same time the offenders are the instruments of their own pun- 
ishments. Lively, active tempered boys, are the most frequent 
transgressors of good order, and the most difficult to reduce to reason; 
the best way to reform them is by making monitors of them'. It diverts 
the activity of their minds from mischief, by useful employment, 
which, at the same time adds greatly to their improvement. I have 
experienced correction of any kind only to be needful in proportion 



80 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

as boys were under the influences of bad example at home. Nothing 
is, unhappily, more common than for parents to undo, by their bad 
example at home, all the good their children obtain at school. 

"The following punishment is most tremendous; when a boy is 
found to deserve punishment, instead of recurring to the rod, make 
him a bashaw of three tails. The use of a famous coat, called a fool's 
coat, is well known in schools; let such a coat be suspended in public 
schools, the name of the offender printed in large letters, that the 
whole school may read, and fasten on it the words "Bashaw of three 
tails," also on the back of the coat, and three birchen rods suspended 
from the tail of the coat at due and regular distances. This punish- 
ment is excellent for the senior boys, and will not need many repeti- 
tions. Sometimes an idle boy may have a pillow fetched from a 
feather bed, and placed on the desk for him to lay his head on, as 
if asleep, in the face of the school. A boy wandering from his seat 
may be placed under a hen-coop. A go-cart is another excellent 
punishment for an idle boy, but rocking in a cradle is better. Exhibi- 
tions of this sort soon bring a large school into order." 1 

The following observations at the close of Lancaster's list of 
punishments show his hatred of the rod and his desire to mitigate the 
terrors of the schools of that day. 

' "The Rewards and Punishments before Described, have 

been tried eor thirteen years, among many thousand children, 

. , , and have been attended with beneficial 

Lancaster's Hatred „ 

of the Rod EiTECT - 

"The reader must know, that there are in 

this wicked world many Knights of the Rod, who wish to perpetuate 

the reign of ignorance among the lower classes of society, whom they 

.are pleased to consider 'doomed to drudgery of daily labor, ,' and that 

'learning to write and cypher,' will render them 'discontented with 

their lot.' These plead with mighty virulence, for every mode of 

punishment that can embitter learning, and make school hateful to 

boys. The sinking empire of the rod is tottering daily to ruin; and 

many and bitter are the lamentations of its partizans. One of these 

hired advocates of ignorance, in silly phrensy, imagined that the 

apparatus of logs, shackles, caravans, etc. were all implements of 

slavery; and he had the temerity to misrepresent one of the greatest 

enemies of slavery, a Friend, a Quaker, as an abettor of cruelty; these 



1 Lancaster, Epitome, pp. 68-76. 



Religious and Moral Education 81 

things, which have been so seldom used, as hardly to be known among 
the happy children in my school, and which, when resorted to, are 
described as answering their effects 'mostly in a few minutes,' froze 
his heart with horror, and almost frightened him out of his remaining 
senses. Neither he, nor any other conspirators against the educa- 
tion of youth, consider the more degrading severity of the lash, which 
these punishments have for years contributed to annihilate. The 
guillotine in France, during the reign of terror, and the rod in the 
hands of the advocates of ignorance, are alike." 1 

It was to such a 'Knight of the Rod' that Washington Irving was 
sent from his sixth to his fourteenth year, 1789 to 1797, Benjamin 
Romaine, a soldier of the revolution, whose school was at 198 Fulton 
Street. "Another trait which was mentioned by a female schoolmate 
in after life, was his unwillingness to witness the chastisement of the 
other boys. The standing punishment inflicted on truants was 
horsing or hoisting, so called, and as the culprits had to be untrussed, 
it was always administered after school when the girls had been dis- 
missed. But little Irving, she said, could not endure the spectacle; 
the sight of the unlucky urchin shrinking under the rod was too much 
for his nerves, and he finally insisted on leaving with the girls, and was 
permitted." 2 

Following the principles of Lancaster, the Public School Society 

discontinued, without entirely forbidding, corporal punishment and 

based their government upon rivalry, shame, 

, • ... .,i ,i , , i Punishment in New 

and acquisitiveness; with the resort to expul- York Public Schools 

sion in the case of incorrigible pupils. "The 

discipline of the school is enforced by shame, rather than by the 
infliction of pain." 3 According to DeWitt Clinton, "The punish- 
ments are varied with circumstances; and a judicious system of 
rewards, calculated to engage the infant mind in the discharge of its 
duty, forms the key-stone which binds together the whole edifice." 4 
Events proved that the wise Clinton had overestimated the dis- 
ciplinary effects of the system as well as the educational value of 
instruction by monitors. The finer feelings 
were blunted, evil passions aroused, the nerv- p . . 

ous systems of the young children subjected 

1 Lancaster, Epitome, pp. 76-77. 

2 Irving, P. M., Life and Letters of Washington Irving, 1871, Chap. II, 
pp. H-X2. 3 By-laws of 1826, 1836, and 1841. 

4 DeWitt Clinton, Address, 1809. 



82 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

to undue strain, and physical injuries sustained that were more 
objectionable than pain inflicted by the rod. The invention of 
the teacher was taxed to find newer and still newer substitutes for 
corporal punishment. Finally it become necessary to warn the 
teachers against the very measures that had earlier been cited as a 
proof of the humane spirit of the schools. " Yet every caution should 
be taken, lest resort be had to objectionable substitutes for the use 
of the rod; some of which may be equally painful to the corporal 
system — sometimes more injurious, and even dangerous, and not 
unfrequently hurtful from their moral effects — and, therefore, some 
of them certainly improper to be used. The sustaining of wearisome 
burdens, unnatural and long-continued attitudes of restraint, public 
exposures and badges of disgrace, are of this class of punishments. 
Some of these, with judicious modifications of the usual methods by 
which they are practiced, and having due regard to their moral effect 
on the delinquent, may be used, but only under careful limitations, 
and with great circumspection and judgment; for it requires a skilful, 
discreet, and conscientious teacher to use them safely and to advan- 
tage. It is ever to be borne in mind that they are best suited to little 
children, and to boys; and not adapted to the discipline of girls — in 
whom a nice sense of shame, and a delicate sensibility to reputation, 
should be carefully cherished. With them, such punishments tend 
to blunt those feelings which it is the teacher's duty most carefully to 
cultivate as among the best safe-guards to female character. Can 
punishments of this class, then, be safely ventured upon, without 
extreme vigilance on the part of the teacher? How hazardous in 
its moral effect to leave a child publicly exposed, and liable to be 
neglected by the teacher, till the current of feeling begins to turn! 
Observe, that this ebbing again of the passion must be nicely watched. 
It is only by a careful attention to this critical point, that punishment 
by public exposure can become, as it sometimes does, a powerful 
means of discipline, especially in the training of little children. But 
it becomes worse than useless, if not thus rightly used; for, be it 
remembered, that while the teacher may be here and there, the tide of 
feeling may change, and the first surge of its backward course excite 
pride, anger, and malevolence. And though this should be but a 
small degree, every moment's continuance of the punishment or 
exposure beyond the salutary point, inflicts a moral injury that sur- 
passes tenfold any possible good which the teacher can hope to derive 
from it as a means of discipline. It also renders the punishment alto- 



Religious and Moral Education 83 

gether ineffectual for another occasion, thereby throwing the teacher 
into a new perplexity for other substitutes for corporal punishment." 1 
"The Keystone of the whole edifice," according to Clinton, was the 
the system of rewards. Labels of honor, as well as those of disgrace 
were used, "To obtain the enviable epithet of 'Good Rewards 

Boy' or 'Good Girl' which, with much parade and 
solemnity, is conferred upon those who merit that distinction, is the 
general ambition." 2 More substantial gifts, such as balls, books, 
knives, scissors, combs, mittens and money were bestowed in redemp- 
tion of tickets of merit. There was a complete system of payment 
and fines. The Monitor General received eight tickets daily; other 
monitors, two to four. The stick fixer on promotions received one. 
The teacher gave one thousand additional tickets per month. The 
tickets were valued at one eighth of a cent. The fines were : talking, 
four tickets; disobedience, eight tickets; truancy, twenty tickets; 
fighting, fifty tickets. The prizes were books, tops, marbles, etc. 3 
This plan "was found to produce unhappy results; for, while it stimu- 
lated to exertion on the one hand, it promoted rivalry and mutual 
jealousy on the other; — and it moreover discouraged the unsuccessful, 
creating in them feelings of enmity and dislike towards their fellows 
and even their teachers." 4 To this conclusion the trustees of the 
schools were no doubt led by the discovery that the rewards fell into 
the hands of the strong and the cunning rather than the meritorious. 
In some cases the monthly distribution was anticipated by the steal- 
ing of the gifts from the master's desk. 5 The trustees reported an 
improved discipline in the schools, and incidentally a saving in ex- 
pense, through the discontinuance of the system of tickets and gifts. 

For pecuniary rewards was substituted a form of 

i_'n (i t_- t_ £ j i-li * Discontinuance 

certificate which formed a valuable passport, of Gifts 

introducing the holders of them, after leaving 

school, into desirable situations as clerks and apprentices." 6 

Many features of the so-called self-government plans of to-day 

were anticipated in the New York schools nearly a century ago. It 



1 Manual, Public School Society, 1850, pp. 11-12. 

2 Sketch of New York Free School, prefix to Lancaster, Improvements in 
Education, New York, 1807, p. xxx. 

3 Manual of Free School Society, 1820. 

4 Report, Public School Society, 1847, pp. 8-9. 

5 Minutes of Public School No. 2. 

6 Report, Public School Society, 1847, p. 9. 



84 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

is to be remembered that the monitorial system itself 
Government" was ^^ated as a plan of self-government, that is, a 
government of the school by the pupils rather than 
by the teacher, and the moral effects claimed were the same as those 
claimed by modern advocates of the various forms of pupil govern- 
ment. "The boys who prove themselves worthy, are chosen to fill 
places of trust and authority over other boys; so that it may be safely 
affirmed that a boy educated agreeably to this system, cannot fail 
to be made practically acquainted with the elementary principles of 
civil government, and thereby preeminently qualified to become a 
good citizen." 1 John Griscom had no doubt that in a school of 
five hundred boys, well regulated under a plan of monitorial superin- 
tendence, there would be less quarreling, noise, turbulence, bad lan- 
guage, or ill manners of any kind, than is usually witnessed in a 
school of forty which has no other supervision than that of the teacher. 2 
The jury system; a form of currency used for rewards and fines, 
and convertible into cash; police and health officers; measures that 

are considered distinctive of the modern "school city," 
o U1 ? supplemented the monitorial system. The organization 

of the Class of Merit is thus described by Andrews in his 
"History of the African Free School," one of the Lancasterian schools 
under the care of the Public School Society: "This class is composed 

of such boys as are the best behaved, and most advanced 
M • in their learning; they are distinguished in school, by a 

medal suspended to the neck, on which are engraved 
the words 'Class of Merit.' This class has a regular meeting on 
the 1st Tuesday in each month, to transact business, and to hear the 
reports of standing and other Committees. It is allowed one hour 
each session to conduct its business. Its officers are a Chairman, 
Secretary, Register, and Treasurer. The class, by a vote, determines 
in what branch of learning a member shall excel, to entitle him to 
the Chair, at the next succeeding meeting — the teacher always decid- 
ing. . . . The class appoints a Committee at each stated 
meeting, whose duty it is to take notice of the general deportment of 
the members, when out of school, and to report to the class, if they 
discover anything in the conduct of a member, immoral or unbecom- 
ing, and the member so reported is dealt with in such manner by the 



1 New York Free School Society, 1824 (19th Report). 

2 American Lyceum National Convention, 183 1, p. 40. 



Religious and Moral Education 85 

class, as the circumstance of the case may require, such as suspension, 
expulsion, or otherwise, (in such cases the teacher is always first 
consulted) ; even reproof by. the Chairman has often been found to 
have a beneficial effect. Another Committee observes the appearance 
of the members in school, as it respects cleanliness, and report, if 
occasion require; and a third is called the Health Committee, who, 
on hearing of the sickness of any member, visit him and render ser- 
vices of kindness, and report on such subjects, every regular meeting. 
This little society operates in a small sphere, similarly to those in- 
stitutions, established among men, which are intended to call into 
action the best feelings of the heart." 1 



1 Andrews, New York African Free Schools, pp. 81-84. 



84 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

is to be remembered that the monitorial system itself 
Government" was initiated a s a plan of self-government, that is, a 
government of the school by the pupils rather than 
by the teacher, and the moral effects claimed were the same as those 
claimed by modern advocates of the various forms of pupil govern- 
ment. "The boys who prove themselves worthy, are chosen to fill 
places of trust and authority over other boys; so that it may be safely 
affirmed that a boy educated agreeably to this system, cannot fail 
to be made practically acquainted with the elementary principles of 
civil government, and thereby preeminently qualified to become a 
good citizen." 1 John Griscom had no doubt that in a school of 
five hundred boys, well regulated under a pla*n of monitorial superin- 
tendence, there would be less quarreling, noise, turbulence, bad lan- 
guage, or ill manners of any kind, than is usually witnessed in a 
school of forty which has no other supervision than that of the teacher. 2 
The jury system; a form of currency used for rewards and fines, 
and convertible into cash; police and health officers; measures that 

are considered distinctive of the modern "school city," 
g 1 ? supplemented the monitorial system. The organization 

of the Class of Merit is thus described by Andrews in his 
"History of the African Free School," one of the Lancasterian schools 
under the care of the Public School Society: "This class is composed 

of such boys as are the best behaved, and most advanced 
M • in their learning; they are distinguished in school, by a 

medal suspended to the neck, on which are engraved 
the words 'Class of Merit.' This class has a regular meeting on 
the 1st Tuesday in each month, to transact business, and to hear the 
reports of standing and other Committees. It is allowed one hour 
each session to conduct its business. Its officers are a Chairman, 
Secretary, Register, and Treasurer. The class, by a vote, determines 
in what branch of learning a member shall excel, to entitle him to 
the Chair, at the next succeeding meeting — the teacher always decid- 
ing. . . . The class appoints a Committee at each stated 
meeting, whose duty it is to take notice of the general deportment of 
the members, when out of school, and to report to the class, if they 
discover anything in the conduct of a member, immoral or unbecom- 
ing, and the member so reported is dealt with in such manner by the 



1 New York Free School Society, 1824 (19th Report). 

2 American Lyceum National Convention, 183 1, p. 40. 



Religious and Moral Education 85 

class, as the circumstance of the case may require, such as suspension, 
expulsion, or otherwise, (in such cases the teacher is always first 
consulted) ; even reproof by. the Chairman has often been found to 
have a beneficial effect. Another Committee observes the appearance 
of the members in school, as it respects cleanliness, and report, if 
occasion require; and a third is called the Health Committee, who, 
on hearing of the sickness of any member, visit him and render ser- 
vices of kindness, and report on such subjects, every regular meeting. 
This little society operates in a small sphere, similarly to those in- 
stitutions, established among men, which are intended to call into 
action the best feelings of the heart." 1 



1 Andrews, New York African Free Schools, pp. 81-84. 



VII 

SCHOOL INSPECTION AND TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

Examinations and Exhibitions 

Local school committees were required "to meet at their respec- 
tive schools every Thursday afternoon from three to five o'clock, 
for the purpose of inspecting the schools, and examin- 

Examinations ing the cnildren in tneir learning." 1 The faithful 
performance of this exacting duty, as shown in the 
minutes of the committees, is indicative of the devotion to the cause 
of education of the active members of the Public School Society. 
Minutes of the Committee of the New York Public School No. 2, in 
Henry Street, cover a period of forty years. A few of the entries 
are copied as suggestive of the methods of inspection and examination. 
Under date of October 28, 1812: "Premiums were given to deserving 
monitors, in proportion to their tickets presented, for their attention 
to the silence and attention of their classes. The money amounting 
to two dollars and twenty five cents was furnished by the teacher." 
Under date of September 30, 1818: "Present, Whitehead Hicks. The 
school much in its usual order. The scholars' tickets were redeemed 
with suitable prizes furnished by the committee of supplies. The 
teacher reports that the monitors of the select class have regularly 
attended school since the last report." 2 

"New York Free School No. 2, December 2nd, 1818: Present, White- 
head Hicks. Examined the writing of some of the children, but 
principally devoted the time of this afternoon to the giving out of 
prizes, to those children who had tickets. The prizes were furnished 
by the committee of supplies, and highly calculated to be useful to 
the children, consisting of mittens, combs, scissors, etc. The teachers 
report that the monitors of the select class have attended the school 
regularly and also to the discharge of their duties since the last report. 
The number of children present 294." 

"New York Free School, October 14, 1818: Present, Whitehead 
Hicks. Examined the writing generally and was satisfied with the 

1 By-laws of the Public School Society, 1826, p. 12. 

2 Minutes, Public School No. 2, 1811-1853. 

86 



School Inspection and Training of Teachers 87 

performances of the scholars. The order of the school was satisfac- 
tory. Agreeable to the resolutions of the Board, ten dollars was 
presented to the Monitor General of Order (Walter Palmer), as a 
reward for his assiduity and attention to the discharge of the duties 
of his office. Ten dollars in clothing was also given to each of the 
monitors of the select class for the regular attendance in school, and 
discharge of their duties, during the last two quarters, ending the 
second of this month. The teachers of the Select Class report that 
the monitors have been regular in their attendance since the last 
report. The number of scholars present 289." 1 

"New York Free School, 2nd August, 1819: Present, Benjamin 
Marshall and, by his proxy, Lyman Spatoiss. Admitted two boys and 
and four girls; total six. School was dismissed to give the children 
an opportunity to witness the ascent of a balloon." 

"New York Free School,' December 16, 1824. Present, James 
Roosevelt and Jos. Grinnell. Agreeable to notice given last week, 
ten boys of the 9th class came foward as competitors for the prize 
of one dollar, to be awarded to the one that should speak a piece of 
poetry best. The committee had great enjoyment in hearing the 
whole number recite the piece and found it difficult to decide who 
performed best, after fully considering all circumstances the prize 
was awarded to Robert Hoey, and a small reward given to Richard 
Woolgar, John Crosley and S. Bloodgood. Much to the credit of 
the other Boys they were quiet and orderly while the competitors 
were reciting. A request was received from Susan Swain to hear her 
grandson recite the 17th Chap, of 1st Kings, which was attended to 
and he performed very well. The Girls' school is in good order." 2 

During the year covered by the 35th Annual Report of the Public 
School Society, 11,844 visits were made by the trustees. The annual 
examination, which was a great event in each Lan- 
casterian school, was attended by the trustees, city Examinations 
officials, and the public generally. Such an event 
is recorded by Andrews: "The exercises of the examination were as 
follows: 1st, A class of six boys and six girls read the 53d Chapter of 
Isaiah. 2d, A lesson from the English Reader, by six boys and six 
girls. 3d, ' Creation,' spoken by a boy. 4th, Writing and ciphering 
books exhibited. 5th, Address to Susquehannah. 6th, A class of 



1 Minutes, Public School No. 2, 1811-1853. 

2 Ibid. 



88 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

girls in addition. 7th, A class of boys in subtraction. 8th, A class 
of girls in compound multiplication. 9th, A class of boys in simple 
division. 10th, Do. in the Rule of Three. 11th, Exhibition of the 
the Sewing School, with the articles of their manufacture. 12th, 
CIII Psalm in concert. 13th, A recitation — subject, 'Africa.' 14th, 
Girls' arithmetical table class. 15th, Drawing upon the board, before 
the company, an accurate map of the United States, after which a 
critical examination in American Geography. 16th, Examination 
of a Grammar Class. 17th, The following table of promotions for 
the last year, was read by a lad, viz: ... In conclusion, the 
following piece prepared for the occasion was spoken by a young pupil: 
'I am a little fellow, and know but little. — This is my first appearance 
before you my friends, as a public speaker, and it becomes me to be 
the last, and say but little. All things must have a beginning and an 
end. I am come to begin my public speaking, and to end the present 
exercises, which I hope have been performed to your satisfaction. Be- 
fore I take leave of this respectable audience, I feel a desire to bear my 
small testimony in favor of the advantages which are derived from a 
constant attendance at school, and a close application to study while 
in school, even by the youngest scholar. I am but seven years old, and 
I think I have learned considerable since last examination. I was then 
entirely ignorant of writing; I now present you with these humble spec- 
imens of my attainments in that art. I was then also unacquainted 
with the use of figures; I have since gone through simple addition, sub- 
traction, multiplication, and division; I have some knowledge also of 
the compound rules. I say not these things to magnify my little self 
into something great, but to the credit of the Lancasterian plan of 
instruction, and for the encouragement of all my little school-mates 
to improve the time while they have the advantage of an early edu- 
cation.'" 1 

LINES 

"On the manner of conducting a Monitorial School, spoken at a public 
Examination. (Taken from an English publication, altered). 

'Before we take a pen in hand, 
We learn to write upon the sand; 
And when the alphabet we know, 
We write on slates — six in a row. 
An easy lesson is prepar'd, 
As, AB, ab — ARD, ard. 

1 Andrews, History of African Free School, 1830, pp. 43-44. 



School Inspection and Training of Teachers 89 

And those who spell, or read, the best, 

Have some reward above the rest. 

When we in spelling well succeed 

We do appointed lessons read. 

The Holy Bible is the source 

Of each gradationary course. 

A semicircle draught of six, 

Whose eyes must on the lesson fix; 

With hands behind, attentive stand, 

Read — till they hear a fresh command. 

Our places, then, at desks, we take, 

(For standing long, our legs would ache.) 

Rehearse the Tables, Grammar too, 

And many more things have to do. 

Our monitor demands a "Look," 

"Clean slates," "Prepare," then takes his book, 

Gives out a word, when all in class 

Write, one each other to surpass. 

Six words are written, — then "Show slates," 

(Which must be rang'd like rows of plates 

On dresser shelves) — the slates are clean, 

That words may be distinctly seen. 

***** 

'When we can shape the letters well, 

And do the rest in class excel, 

With pen and ink in books we write, 

And think we're almost men — or quite. 

At times, through carelessness we blot, 

A fine in tickets, then's our lot; 

But if the book throughout is fair, 
"Reward in tickets then's our share. 

***** 

'We chant the parts of speech, and tenses; 
Or, in a slow, responsive air, 
As monks and nuns would say a prayer; 
Thus, by frequent repetition, 
We gain this useful acquisition. 
We mind our stops in every clause, 

'We learn by Lindley Murray's rules, 
'Our Regulations, wise and good, 

Teach us to fear and serve our God; 

T' attend the worship of the Lord, 

And reverence his Holy Word.'" 1 



1 Andrews, History of the African Free School, 1830, pp. 139-142. 



90 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

Such exhibitions, in Lancasterian and other schools, were planned 

to display to an admiring community the remarkable work of the 

schools. But in the general chorus of praise, it is possible to find, 

here and there, a note of criticism. "Of all the plans which are 

adopted to wheedle a credulous community out of their money and 

their children out of their precious time, public 
Criticism of Public ■,., ... i .-, , r • ,. 

Exhibitions exhibitions or plays are the most fascinating 

and deceptive. They interest the heart, and 
engross the whole attention of the youth, and after all that can pos- 
sibly be acquired by them has been attained, it may be said truly, 
in regard to the pupils, that they have sustained a heavy, and, in 
many instances, an almost irreparable loss. Indeed from the mo- 
ment that the teacher has concluded upon having an exhibition, 
every other part of the business of his school is in a great measure, if 
not altogether, neglected. From that time the important branches 
of orthography, reading, writing, grammar, geography, arithmetic, 
etc. are thrown aside as matters of trivial importance. And for 
what purpose it may be asked is all this mighty innovation introduced? 
Why is the whole system and arrangement of the school turned topsy- 
turvey, and all those studies which have been heretofore deemed use- 
ful, discontinued? The answer is, that children may be taught the 
art of spouting. Thus, teachers, instead of endeavoring to initiate 
their pupils into those branches of learning which serve as steps to 
raise them to a knowledge of the important art of composition, or 
of committing their own thoughts to writing in an orderly and accurate 
manner, cause them to murder, as it were, their precious time, in 
learning by rote, pieces which are far above their comprehension, and 
with the meaning of which, little or no pains are taken to make them 
acquainted." 1 

The Training of Teachers 

Until the foundation of the Normal College in 1870, the only train- 
ing for the teachers in the New York Public Schools was secured 

through the monitorial system. Monitors were 

Monitors Become j , i ■, • -vr -17- i 

T , drawn upon to open new schools in New York 

and other places. The first teacher of School 

No. 2 was John Missing, assistant in No. 1. Shepherd Johnson, a 

monitor in No. 1, took charge of No. 3. The experiment in New 

York aroused great interest throughout the country, various commit- 

1 Juvenile Mirror and Teachers Manual, New York, 1812, pp. 267-268. 



School Inspection and Training of Teachers 91 

tees visited its schools, and many calls for teachers were received. 
" Henry Cooper and Francis Windsor, formerly scholars and monitors- 
general in School No. 1, have become teachers and are now actively 
engaged in that capacity; the first in Philadelphia, and the latter in 
Burlington, New Jersey, having a school under his direction composed 
of about 50 boys. It may be proper to remark that Francis Windsor 
is but fifteen years old." 1 With the arrival of Charles Picton who 
was trained in the Borough Road School in London, and who was 
brought to New York in 1818 to take charge of School No. 4, and to 
maintain the purity of the system, the trustees made an effort to 
extend their system of training. "With deep solicitude for diffusing 
the means of education among the poor, and for the 
general extension of the Lancasterian system through- Sk Weeks 
out the country, the trustees invite all those persons 
who are desirous of obtaining a knowledge of this method of instruc- 
tion to repair to the schools under their charge, where in the space 
of six or eight weeks, a competent knowledge of the Lancasterian 
Methods of instruction can be obtained without fee or reward." 2 
Mr. Picton, in a letter to the general committee of the British and 
Foreign School Society, February 10, 1819, reported eleven teachers 
trained in New York, during the previous year. They supplied 
schools in New York; Greenwich; Long Island; Schenectady; Mt. 
Holly, New Jersey; and Savannah, Ga. 3 Governor DeWitt Clinton, 
in his message to the Legislature in 1818, recommended that a suffi- 
cient number of teachers be trained to supply all our common schools, 
by sending intelligent young men to the Lancasterian Seminaries in 
New York, where they would be instructed gratuitously. Lancaster, 
who visited the New York schools before opening the Model School 
in Philadelphia, was evidently not pleased with the "mush-room" 
plan of training teachers in six weeks. He wrote that he "does not 
approve of idle innovations in the system. Mush-room teachers 
often attain a partial knowledge of the mechanism of tuition, and 
there they stop." 4 In order to provide for the monitors additional 



1 From letters of trustees of New York Free School Society to British and 
Foreign School Society. In report of British and Foreign School Society, 
1823, p. 146. 

2 Letters from Board of Trustees of New York Free School Society, in 
Report of British and Foreign School Society, 18 19. 

3 Report of British and Foreign School Society, 1819. 

4 Letter to Burwell Bassett, February 29, 1820. 



92 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

instruction in arithmetic, English, grammar and 
Morning Schools , , , c ,. . , , 

f M tors g e °g ra phy, teachers were, for a time, required to 

hold a morning school from six to eight. 1 "In 
1834, the number of Primaries having greatly increased, and occasion- 
ing the employment of very many monitors, who, from the elementary 
character of those schools, were cut off from the opportunity of further 
improvement, it was suggested by the Committee on Teachers, that 
this deficiency might be supplied by establishing a school for their 
especial benefit, to be held on the last day of the week. Such a school 
was then organized, when it was soon perceived that in its successful 

operations it might prove the foundation of a 
Saturday and Evening -vr , , 1 t ■,• ™ r 

Normal Schools Normal School of- peculiar excellence for 

training and supplying teachers for the in- 
stitution, better fitted than any other for its purposes. The plan 
was accordingly extended, and another opened for the monitors of 
the male school, which from November to March should be held 
five evening sessions per week; and another for the improvement of 
the monitors of the Female Colored Schools, embracing several 
Primaries, in which were girls employed under the like disadvantages. 
A proposition was soon after carried into effect to receive and admit 
to the privileges of these schools such of the pupils of the 9th class of 
the upper schools as from peculiar intelligence, industry, and decided 
taste for the pursuits of learning, might be recommended by the 
teacher as solicitous of such advantages. These in the normal schools 
are denominated 'cadets'; and those qualified by advancement, and 
desirous of such a station, are appointed as monitors, under pay. 
When duly prepared for a limited examination before the committee, 
they are, if approved, promoted to the station of 'passed monitors,' 
and continuing their course of instruction, are in a regular progress 
of promotion to that of assistant teachers, after a full examination by 
the committee, and thence to the rank of principal, as vacancies occur. 
The normal schools now contain two hundred pupils, under the charge 
of nine teachers, and have already (1842) furnished the schools with 
a considerable number of teachers. The number of 'cadets' gradually 
increases and the attendance of the monitors, and the general interests 
of the establishment, are on the advance." 2 "The normal school for 
females was held on Saturday from nine a. m. to two p. m. The 



1 By-laws of the New York Free School Society, 1818. 
2 42d Annual Report, Public School Society, 1848, p. 32. 



School Inspection and Training of Teachers 93 

studies were grammar, geography, astronomy, arithmetic, and natural 
philosophy, etc. The school for male pupils was held five evenings a 
week, and had the same studies with the addition of Latin." 1 

In an address at the opening of the Normal College building in 
1873, Superintendent Henry Kiddle described the earlier provisions 
for training teachers. "Thirty-seven years ago the Public School 
Society adopted, and applied the principle of normal instruction, in 
the special arrangement which it made for the inexperienced and un- 
trained teachers employed in schools under its management. 
The Society was obliged to pay low salaries; it employed female 
teachers generally at $25 for the first year. It was impossible to 
secure trained teachers. TJie principal part of the work was per- 
formed by pupil teachers, that is, teachers five days in the week and 
pupils on the sixth. Considering the imperfections the results 
were remarkable." 2 According to Commissioner Isaac Bell the results 
were remarkable only in being entirely inadequate. "The committee 
formed supplementary classes in nearly all of the female departments 

of the public schools — many of them small and 

j 1,1 i , i .i No Professional 

expensive; and although teachers were mamly Trainine 

appointed from them, there was no pretense even 

of imparting instruction in methods and principles of teaching. There 

was no training in government and discipline, and therefore thousands 

of children were compelled to suffer loss and injury before these 

teachers acquired the necessary tact and power to manage their 

classes." 3 



1 43d Annual Report, Public School Society, 1849, p. 6. 

2 Address of Henry Kiddle at the opening of Normal College building, 1873. 

3 Commissioner Isaac Bell in address delivered at organization meeting of 
Department of Public Instruction, New York, 1871. 



VIII 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 

The Lancasterian system of instruction was the official system of 
the New York Public Schools from their foundation in 1806 until 
1853, when the schools of the Public School Society were taken over 
by the Board of Education. Until the estab- 
Moritorfal System lishment of ward schools in 1843, the system 

constituted a practical monopoly in the field 
of public education; it was supported mainly by taxes, administered 
by a self-perpetuating body of trustees. Teachers were forbidden to 
make any departure from the plans laid down in the by-laws and 
manuals. The system's final breakdown must, therefore, be ascribed 
not to any limitation in the experimental period or to unfavorable 
conditions, but to its inherent weakness. 

The adoption of this system by the Free School Society was due 
primarily to its cheapness, and to the impression made by the com- 
pleteness of its organization. It appeared to 

easons or oice ^ Q particularly adapted to charity schools 
such as were proposed by the society. The 
editor of the Academician considered that the Lancasterian system 
was adapted to charitable institutions where there were many pupils, 
but that the Pestalozzian plan was superior for the private schools, 
as it " addresses itself to the understanding and elicits thought." 1 One 
contributor to the Academician in 1818, whose observations are very 
clear and complete, had two children in Pestalozzi's school. The 
relative importance of the two systems is thus estimated: "Although 
we are willing to allow that children may teach children and thereby 
diffuse a limited knowledge of a few elementary branches of education 
among the poorer classes of the community, yet we are by no means 
convinced that the popular system now in vogue is destined to be the 
American National System. The pioneers Bell, Lancaster, and others 
are preparing the public mind for the introduction of a more philo- 
sophic and permanent system. The world is indebted to Lancaster 

1 Academician, 1818, Vol. I, p. 270. 

94 



Summary and Conclusion 95 

for an improved organization of charity schools and the adaptation 

of his system to rigid economy, but the immortal Pestalozzi and his 

disciple Fellenberg have brought to perfection a system of mental 

culture, industry, and economy which, when known in all its details 

to the American people, will, we hesitate not to predict, be embraced 

and adopted in all places of systematic education." 1 

The history of the Lancasterian movement in New York City and 

in the United States tends to confirm the position of the United 

States Commissioner of Education that we are 

, . ,. , • j ,. , re - Blind Adherence 

not an mventive people m educational affairs. . .. g stem 

It required a trial of nearly half century to prove 
that the scheme of an ignorant, but talkative, London schoolmaster 
was a failure so far as practical results were concerned, and that it 
was without foundation in sound theory. In the field of education 
the critical as well as the inventive powers of the intellectual and 
public spirited leaders of the first half of the nineteenth century 
seemed to lie dormant. However much we may admire the philan- 
thropic spirit of the devoted trustees of the Free School Society and 
the Public School Society, a study of their reports cannot fail to leave 
the impression that they were maintaining an institution with the 
machinery that their wisdom deemed appropriate. In the words of 
the secretary and historian of the society, "It was their constant aim 
to preserve in all its integrity a scheme of popular education rendered 
eminently honorable by the names of the distinguished men who had 
been interested in it from its inception, and to hand it down to their 
successors in a form massive and enduring, and as faultless as practi- 
cal wisdom, enlightened philanthropy, and liberal endownment could 
make it." 2 

In tracing the decline of the Lancasterian system in New York 
it is necessary to distinguish between the failure of the system of 
instruction and that of the society which gave it 

support. The dissolution of the society was due e V u G °i c U - 1° 

.,..". school Society 

mainly (1) to religious controversy, (2) to its un- 
democratic organization, and (3) to the evident failure of the system 
with which it was identified. If one private organization should 
receive public funds for the support of schools, why should similar 
support be denied to the schools under the care of- the various 
churches? The history of the Public School Society is a series of 

1 Academician, 1818, Vol. I, p. 341. 

2 Bourne, History of the Public School Society, p. 527. 



96 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

addresses to the public, appeals and remonstrances to the city council 
and the legislature, public debates, and contests at the polls to main- 
tain their monopoly. The account of this controversy constitutes 
most of the material in Bourne's volume of 768 pages. A settlement 
was reached by the legislative prohibition of the extension of the 
Society's schools, thus forcing union with the Board of Education. 
The undemocratic organization of the schools in New York City 
was pointed out by Governor Seward in his message to the Legislature 
in 1842. "In the public school system of the city one hundred per- 
sons are trustees and inspectors, and, by continued con- 
M , sent of the Common Council, are the dispensers of an 

annual average sum of $35,000, received from the com- 
mon school fund of the State, and a sum equal to $95,000, derived 
from an indiscriminating tax upon the real and personal estates of 
the city. They build school-houses chiefly from the public funds, 
they appoint and remove teachers, fix their compensation, and pre- 
scribe the moral, intellectual, and religious instruction which one 
eighth of the rising generation of the State shall be required to re- 
ceive. Their powers, more effective and far-reaching than are exer- 
cised by the municipality of the city, are not derived from the com- 
munity whose children are educated and whose property is taxed, 
nor even from the State, which is so great an almoner, and whose 
welfare is so deeply concerned, but from an incorporated and per- 
petual association, which grants upon pecuniary subscription, the 
privileges even of life-membership, and yet holds in fee-simple the 
public school edifices, valued at eight hundred thousand dollars. 
Lest there might be too much responsibility, even to the association, 
that body can elect only one half of the trustees, and those thus selected 
appoint their fifty associates." 1 

A committee of the Legislature reported that "it can no longer 
be concealed or denied that the failure of the public schools to accom- 
plish the object contemplated by their establishment, 
., g • results, in a great degree, from a disinclination on the 

part of many parents to entrust these schools with 
the education of their children. The fact is, indeed, so abundantly 
shown in the number of petitions now before the Legislature for a 
change in the present system, that it requires no additional proof. 
During the last sixteen years, the Public School Society, as it appears 



1 Bourne, History of the Public School Society, p. 498-499. 



Summary and Conclusion 97 

from its own admissions, has had to defend its monopoly against the 
struggles of discontented masses of the population. Evidence more 
conclusive and affecting is seen in the multitudes of children in the 
streets and on the wharves of the city, growing up to the rights and 
responsibilities of citizens, but strangers to the simplest elements 
of learning, and acquiring the education of vice. . . . There is 
something exceedingly incongruous with our republican habits of 
thinking, in the idea of taking the children of a population approach- 
ing half a million of souls, taxing them at the same time for the support 
and maintenance of the schools, and, when both the children and 
taxes are furnished, withdrawing both out of the hands of guardians 
and taxpayers, and handing them over to the management of an 
irresponsible private chartered company. Such a concentration of 
power into mammoth machinery of any description is odious to the 
feelings, and sometimes dangerous to the rights, of freemen." 1 

As has been already noted the monitorial system owed its long life 
in New York to the support of a powerful corporation and dated its 
downfall as an official system of instruction 
from the dissolution of the society to which it Monitorial System 
owed its support. Though the Public School 
Society never lost confidence in the system with which "Providence" 
had favored them, they were gradually compelled by circumstances 
to limit its field. It was difficult to secure a supply of monitors, and 
very few children remained in school after the age of eleven. Of 
those who were mature enough to become monitors, few could be 
induced to remain after their parents discovered that more money 
could be earned in other occupations. An attempt to hold monitors 
until twenty-one as apprentices was found to exceed the authority 
of the society. The manifest superiority for young children of the 
schools established by the Infant School Society in 1827, led to the 
withdrawal of the four lower classes of the monitorial school and the 
formation of primary schools and primary departments, and the sub- 
stitution of women teachers for boy monitors. In the upper schools 
the introduction of astronomy, algebra, geom- 
etry, trigonometry and book-keeping necessi- Teachers M u ^|^ 
tated the employment of more teachers. How- 
ever, the mechanism of the monitorial plan was, as far as possible, 
retained, and defended on grounds of formal discipline. Notwith- 



1 Bourne, History of the Public School Society, pp. 504-505. 



98 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

standing the manifest failure to secure the confidence of the com- 
munity and of the great numbers of children growing up in the 
streets as vagrants, the society continued to claim that their system 
was the true basis for free institutions and that the pupils were 
"guarded from any evil tendency by the necessary vigilance and 
constant checks imposed by the monitorial management of the 
school." 1 

One cannot but conclude that, in the effort to maintain a system, 
the Public School Society was led to overlook the real problems of 
education and to put forth false claims of efficiency — intellectual, 
moral and social — and to rely upon the weight of authority and a 
superficial display in examinations and school exhibitions. In the 
reports of the society one looks in vain for any evidence of real insight 
as to any phase of their vast undertaking. While enormous changes 
were taking place in the economic, social, and religious conditions of 
the population, the guardians of the youth and the future of the city, 
year after year in the same phrases proclaimed the saving virtue of 

the monitorial system. "Never was there 
Failure of Benevolent ■, , . ... ,• , ,,. , , 

Despotism in Education a clearer case of an institution established 

for the noblest ends and administered by 
a body of eminent people in an almost faultless way at last becoming 
a practical hindrance to education." 2 

As the trial of the Lancasterian system was world wide, and under 
all conditions the failure pronounced, the grand experiment in New 
York is not of special significance in the general verdict. What this 
experiment did especially exemplify is the insufficiency of benevolent 
despotism in the province of education. 

Beneficial Results of the System 

While it seems surprising that the monitorial system was so long 
maintained in New York, there is less occasion for criticism regarding 
the introduction of the system when there is taken into consideration 
the lack of educational facilities at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century, the crude methods employed, and public indifference towards 
the education of the masses in all the great cities of Europe and 
America. In London, Paris, and Berlin, as well as in New York and 



1 42d Annual Report, Public School Society, 1848, p. 42. 
2 Reverend A. D. Mayo, In Report of United States Commissioner of Edu- 
cation, 1 897-1 898, p. 460. 



Summary and Conclusion 99 

Philadelphia, the only provision for the education of the poor was 
made by the churches or private philanthropy. It was not until 
the middle of the century that municipal organization included the 
modern plans of police and fire protection, street paving, cleaning, 
etc. No city in the earlier part of the century could have undertaken 
a system of public schools as maintained at pres- Education of 

ent. It was largely through the cheapness of the Community to 
monitorial plans that the community was gradually Support of 

led to assume the expense of public education. In 
1823, 4090 pupils were taught at an expense per pupil of Sl.SO. 1 
Under the Board of Education, expenses based on average attendance 
rose to $12 in 1851 and $30.54 in 1867. 2 

In place of the crippled soldier and the needy mistress of the Dame 
School the new system supplied young and enthusiastic teachers and 
monitors trained to control large groups of children. The training, 
however, can hardly be compared with that of the 
modern normal school. Six weeks practice as ^ea^ers 

monitors was deemed sufficient to insure proficiency. 
In the so-called normal schools of the society none but academic sub- 
jects were taught, the professional training being secured solely from 
the routine of monitorial practice. 

In contrast with the unorganized and uneconomical methods of the 
schools of the times, the Lancasterian school presented a model of 
system and order, and an organized scheme of classi- 
fication and promotion. Besides, reading, spelling Organization 
and writing were taught in the same schools and in 
intimate association. Beginners in arithmetic were not compelled 
to commit to memory meaningless definitions, though there was no 
provision for teaching the idea of number or an understanding of the 
mathematical processes. In contrasting the discipline of the modern 

^schools with the brutality associated with the school- 

, ri _,j , ,., , , Milder Forms of 

master of a hundred years ago, great credit must be Punishment 

given to the monitorial system for the stress laid 

upon moral incentives rather than upon an indiscriminate use of 

corporal punishment. 



1 Report, Free School Society, 1824. 

2 New York Citizens Association, Report of Committee to Examine System 
of Public Instruction, 1869. 



100 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

Evil Effects of the System 

Like the history of many another educational reform the course of 
the Lancasterian movement in New York presents a period of vitality 
under the direction of enthusiastic reformers, then a stage of excess 
of formalism, and finally, after the loss of official recognition and sup- 
port, a survival of phases, outgrown in theory, but maintained by tra- 
dition and custom. All the favorable comments upon 
avery o ^ mon jj- or j a i S y S tem apply to the first period. An 
estimate of the total influence of the system cannot but 
be unfavorable. Its consequences, direct and indirect, are still felt 
in the schools with respect to the ideals of the community and the 
standards of the teacher. Conformity to system and uniformity in 
school administration and method became a fetish. The faithful 
adherence to the manuals or the syllabi prepared by the school authori- 
ties rather than adaptation to the interests of the pupils and the com- 
munity became the prime duty of the teacher. This traditional 
allegiance, the result of many years of an unquestioning routine, 
remains a serious obstacle to the success of progressive administrations. 
Upon the theory that the principal is not a teacher but an adminis- 
trative officer, schools have become far larger than even the limit set 

by Lancaster, which was a thousand; and the princi- 
Oreanization P a ^ remauis what he was in the Lancasterian school, 

the director of the school organization, not the teacher 
and guide of each pupil. 

Though the teacher has long since supplanted the monitor, present 
practice has not entirely departed from the old monitorial ways, 

particularly in connection with studies susceptible to 
Instruction mechanical and memoriter methods of learning. The 

spell of Lancaster has hindered all reform movements. 
Pestalozzian methods which were supposed to be used in the infant 
schools were cast in the Lancasterian mould. The imparting of 
information rather than training in observation and eliciting of thought 
became the aim. There was developed a catechetical method of 
teaching which could readily be acquired by the monitor or by the 
unskilled teacher. With the introduction of the higher studies into 
the grammar grades, a similar adjustment was made to the capacity 
of the monitorial type of teacher. The chopping up of all subject mat- 
ter into easy mechanical stages, and the estimation of pupils' attain- 
ments on the basis of memory became the almost universal practice. 



Summary and Conclusion 101 

Even the teacher with the zeal of youth and trained "by the modern 
methods of pedagogy is apt to be overpowered by having his atten- 
tion directed to the practice of the schools as it has been rather than 
as it may be. 

On the side of intellectual discipline the term monitor has disap- 
peared and the old ideals are being slowly displaced, but on the side 
of moral discipline the monitorial system remains strong- Discioline 
ly intrenched. According to the Lancasterian system 
the chief virtue of the school was submission to authority. The 
method employed was that of military organization in the hands 
of the pupils themselves. Apart from obedience, order and cleanli- 
ness, the moral influence of the school was neutral or negative. So 
long as the government rested in the hands of the monitors, the teach- 
er had no opportunity to inculcate higher moral standards than those 
of the youthful monitors, and considered himself free from responsi- 
bility. It is astonishing that after realizing the inadequacy of the 
monitorial system in instruction, both the community and the teacher 
should be indifferent to its results in the far more important field of 
morals. A careful study of the monitorial schools shows that the 
failure of the system was even more pronounced on the moral side 
than on the intellectual. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Academician, New York, Vol. I, 1818. 

Account of New York Free School Society. New York, Collins & Co., 
1814, pp. 70. 

Address to Parents, New York Free School Society. New York, 1819. 

American Journal of Education. Vols. II, III, IV, V, XIII, XIX. 

American Lyceum National Convention, 1831. 

Andrews, Charles C. 

History of the New York African Free Schools, from their establishment 
in 1787 to the present time, * * with an appendix containing 
specimens of original compositions, both in prose and verse; pieces 
spoken in public examinations, etc. By Charles C. Andrews, teacher of 
the male school. New York, 1830. 

Annual Reports of the New York Free School Society, 1807- 1825. 

Annual Reports of the Public School Society, 1 826-1 853. 

Bell, Commissioner Isaac 

An address delivered at an organization meeting of Department of 
Public Instruction, New York, 1871. 

Bernard, Sir Thomas 

The New School; being an attempt to illustrate its principles, detail 
and advantages. Third edition. London, 1810. pp. ill. 

Boese, Thomas 

Public Education in the City of New York. New York, 1869. 

Bourne, Wm. Oland 

History of the Public School Society of the City of New York. New 
York, 1870. 

By-laws of the New York Free School, New York, 181 8. 

By-laws of the Public School Society of New York, 1826, 1836, 1841. 

Clinton, DeWitt 

An address to the benefactors and friends of the Free School Society 
of New York, delivered on the opening of that institution, in their new 
and spacious building on the eleventh of the twelfth month (December) 
1809. Published by order of the trustees. By DeWitt Clinton, Mayor 
of the City of New York, and President of the Society. New York; 
Collins and Perkins, 1810. 

Clinton, DeWitt 

Speech of his Excellency Governor Clinton to the Legislature of the 
State of New York, Nov. 7, 1820. Albany, 1820. pp. 18. 

Cousin, Victor 

On the State of Education in Holland. London, 1838. 

102 



Bibliography 103 

Francis, John W. 

Old New York. New York, 1866. 

Griscom, John 

Monitorial Instruction: an address at the opening of the New York 
High School, with notes and illustrations. New York, 1825. pp. 216. 

Hill, George Birkbeck 

Life of Rowland Hill. London, 1880. 

Hill, Mathew Davenport, and Rowland 

Plans for the government and liberal instruction of boys in large num- 
bers, as practised at Hazelwood School. Reprint of second edition. 
London, 1894. 

Hosack, David 

Memoirs of DeWitt Clinton. New York, 1829. 

Irving, Pierre M. 

Life and Letters of Washington Irving. New York, 1871. 

Juvenile Mirror and Teachers Manual. New York, 1812. 

Kiddle, Henry 

Address at the opening of Normal College building, New York, 1873. 

Lancaster, Joseph 

Improvements in education, as it respects the industrious classes of 
the community, containing among other important particulars, an 
account of the institution for the education of one thousand poor 
children, Borough Road, Southwark: and of the new system of educa- 
tion on which it is conducted. By Joseph Lancaster. Third edition 
with additions. London, 1805. 8 vo. pp. xvi + 211. 

Lancaster, Joseph 

Improvements in Education, as it respects the industrious classes of 
the community; containing among other particulars, an account of the 
institution for the education of one thousand poor children, Borough 
Road, Southwark; and of the new system of education on which it is 
conducted. By Joseph Lancaster. From the third London edition 
with additions to which is prefixed a sketch of the New York Free 
School. New York. Printedby Collins & Perkins, 1807. pp. xlv+168. 

Lancaster, Joseph 

The British System of Education; being the complete epitome of the 
improvements and inventions practised by Joseph Lancaster; to which 
is added a report of the trustees of the Lancasterian School at George- 
town, D. C. Georgetown, 1812. 

Lancaster, Joseph 

Letters on national subjects, auxiliary to universal education and 
scientific knowledge; addressed to Burwell Bassett, late member of the 
House of Representatives; Henry Clay, Speaker of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, and James Monroe, President of the United States of 
America. By Joseph Lancaster, founder of the Lancasterian System of 
Education. Washington City: Printed for the author by Jacob 
Gideon, Jr., 1820. pp. 60. 



104 Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City 

Lancaster, Joseph 

The Lancasterian System of Education with improvements by its 
founder, Lancaster Institute, Baltimore, Md. Wm. Ogden Niles, printer, 
1821. pp. 14. 

Lancaster, Joseph 

Epitome of some of the chief events and transactions in the life of 
Joseph Lancaster, containing an account of the rise and progress of the 
Lancasterian System of Education; and the author's future prospects 
of usefulness to mankind : Written by himself, and published to promote 
the education of his family. New Haven, 1833. 

Manual of the System of teaching Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and 
Needle-work in the Elementary Schools of the British and Foreign 
School Society, London, 1816. 

Manual of the Lancasterian System of Teaching reading, writing, and arith- 
metic, and needle work, as practised in the schools of the Free School 
Society of New York. New York, 1820; adapted from the Manual of 
British and Foreign School Society, 1816. pp. 63. 

Manual of the System practised in the primary departments of the New York 
Public Schools. Prepared by S. W. Seton, at the request of the Board 
of Trustees. New York: Printed by Mahlon Day, 1830. pp. 84. 

Manual of the System of discipline and instruction for the schools of the 
Public School Society of New York, Instituted in the year 1805. New 
York, 1850. pp. 133. 

Minutes of the Committee of the Free School (Public School) No. 2, 1811 to 
1853- 

New York City, Board of Education Documents. Nos. 2, 5 (1846). 

New York Citizens Association 

Report of the Committee to examine the System of Public Instruction, 
New York, 1869. 

Palmer, A. Emerson 

The New York Public School. New York, 1905. 
Reports of American Institute of Instruction, 1830, 1871. 
Reports of the British and Foreign School Society to the General Meeting, 

London, 1814-1826. 
Report of Georgetown, D. C, Lancaster School, 1812. 
Reports of United States Commissioner of Education, 1897- 1898. 
Reports of New York City Superintendent of Common Schools, 1852, 1855. 
Report on Monitorial Instruction to the Boston School Committee, Boston, 

1828. 
Salmon, David 

Joseph Lancaster. London, 1904. 
Seton, Samuel W. 

Report of the School Visitor to the Trustees of the Public School 

Society, New York, M ay 1829. New York: printed by Mahlon Day, 

1829. 



Bibliography 105 

Sketch of the New York Free School, 1807. 

Included in Lancaster's Improvements in Education. 
Smith, Sydney 

Edinburgh Review, articles on Lancasterian Plan of Instruction, Vols. 

IX, XI, XVII, XIX and XXI. 
Walker, William A. 

Report of County Superintendent of Common Schools, New York, 1846. 
Wood, Commissioner William 

Address delivered at the organization meeting of the Department of 

Public Instruction, New York, 1871. 



